Opioid-Dealing Absecon Doctor Gets License Revoked: AG

An Absecon doctor sentenced to prison for his role in a narcotics-trafficking ring had his medical license revoked, NJ Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal announced Thursday.

Alan Faustino agreed to surrender his medical license for permanent revocation in a Consent Order with the Board on March 8, officials said. Faustino, 50, was temporarily suspended from practice after his April 2015 arrest by the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office, according to officials.

“This physician was abusing his medical license and acting like little more than a drug dealer,” Grewal said in a statement. “The permanent revocation of his license ensures that he’ll never be able to repeat his criminal conduct.”

Faustino was charged after a four-month ACPO investigation. He wrote and sold prescriptions at $300 each for "patients" he never treated, according to the ACPO. His co-defendents would fill the prescriptions and sell them on the streets of Atlantic County, officials said.

Between January and April 2015, Faustino wrote an estimated 690 prescriptions for OxyContin that placed about 81,000 pills on the streets, prosecutors said. Faustino pleaded guilty to second-degree distribution of CDS and was sentence July 2018 to four years in state prison.

“Each time a corrupt or reckless prescriber is taken out of practice we gain ground in our fight to end New Jersey’s addiction crisis,” NJ CARES Director Sharon M. Joyce said in a statement.

Faustino is permanently banned from managing, overseeing, supervising or influencing the practice of medicine or provision of healthcare activities in New Jersey. He also must divest himself of any current and future financial interest in or benefit derived from medical practice.

Patients who believe a licensed healthcare professional is prescribing drugs inappropriately can file a complaint with the State Division of consumer affair. You can file online or by calling 1-800-242-5846 or 973-504- 6200.