Venice Man Faces Prison For Selling Drug Prescriptions

LOS ANGELES, CA — A man who illegally sold prescriptions for opioid pain pills from a sham clinic he owned in Long Beach is expected to be sentenced Wednesday to a federal prison term.

James Wilson, 56, of Venice was found guilty of two counts of distribution of oxycodone in March by a judge in Los Angeles federal court.

Prosecutors said that Wilson, who is not a physician or pharmacist, wrote and sold four prescriptions, each for 120 tablets of maximum-strength immediate-release oxycodone, to a person he believed to be a drug customer but was in fact a confidential informant working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The government is asking for a sentence of 57 months, while Wilson's defense attorney recommends a 41-month term behind bars.

Wilson received $200 for each of the four prescriptions he sold. Law enforcement found 160 blank prescriptions in the defendant's car at the time of his arrest in August 2017, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Wilson's defense papers state that he has a lengthy history of substance abuse and would benefit from a drug abuse treatment program while incarcerated.

Wilson was sentenced to 52 months behind bars in 2009 after his conviction on several fraud offenses, federal prosecutors said.

City News Service