Penn Hills doctor gets federal prison time

He pleaded guilty to selling pills

A Penn Hills doctor who doled out oxycodone for cash and billed insurance for tests no one needed was hauled off to federal prison Tuesday for five years.

“I’d like to take full responsibility for my violations,” Brent Clark told U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab before U.S. marshals removed his necklace, tie and belt and handcuffed him as his family watched in the gallery.

He said he had become addicted to pain pills after hip replacement surgery in March 2017. He said the pills may have clouded his judgment but said that was no excuse for his crimes.

Clark, 55, whose family practice was on Frankstown Road, was charged last year with distributing oxycodone and amphetamines for cash and submitting false bills to insurance after an investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

He pleaded guilty in October.

One of his employees, his brother-in-law Carl Wilson, 49, was also charged and is awaiting sentencing. Wilson, a repeat felon who also pleaded guilty in the case, acted as a “straw purchaser” for Clark, one of many Clark used to acquire oxycodone.

Clark wrote prescriptions for Wilson, who then represented to pharmacies that the pills were for him when he was really getting them for Clark for his own use or for Clark to sell.

Clark then submitted false bills to Wilson’s drug benefits insurer.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Cindy Chung said Clark also wrote scripts for oxycodone and amphetamines for an undercover agent and sent false bills to Medicare for unnecessary tests for the agent.

Ms. Chung said Clark had a kickback arrangement, too, with a medical testing company in which he was paid for referring patients for unnecessary ultrasounds, blood work and other procedures. Medicare and Medicaid paid for the tests. The company is unidentified in court documents.

“In sum, the defendant’s actions were intentional, illegal, and a clear abuse of the trust placed in him as a physician,” Ms. Chung wrote.

Clark’s lawyer, Charles Porter, asked for leniency, saying Clark has no criminal history and is an otherwise honorable man who fell prey to drugs.

“Dr. Clark has lost his career, his profession, based upon his actions while suffering from a drug addiction,” he wrote. “Brent Clark appears before your honor as a good, humble, caring man who has done enormous good in his life. He is also a man who has erred and his reputation has certainly suffered.”

In addition to the prison term, Judge Schwab ordered Clark to pay $211,000 in restitution as part of a civil settlement with HHS. He must also forfeit his medical license, pay $14,000 to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and forfeit the building that housed his practice, along with his Jeep and $131,000 paid to him in the kickback scheme.

He had most recently been working as a cab driver and teaching at a community college.