Madison Heights pharmacist sentenced for distributing over 25K opioid pills, money laundering
MADISON HEIGHTS, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) - A pharmacist in Madison Heights was sentenced to 84 months in prison for distributing over 25,000 opioid pills and money laundering.
Yousef Kosho, 44, operated Great Health Pharmacy in Madison Heights and used the pharmacy to conduct a scheme involving the illegal distribution of prescription drugs, according to United States Attorney Dawn N. Ison.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Kosho would illegally distribute the drugs from the pharmacy for no legitimate medical reason.
He would distribute the drugs by filling prescriptions for patient recruiters like his co-defendant Omar Madison.
"At times, these prescriptions would be dispensed in the names of patients who never frequented the pharmacy," according to the U.S. Department of Justice. "Co-defendant patient recruiter Madison would simply provide prescriptions to Kosho for dispensing without ever bringing the patient to the pharmacy. At other times, Kosho would sell entire pharmacy stock bottles of controlled substances to co-defendant Madison, and others without any medical prescriptions."
Kosho pleaded guilty to distributing 25,253 dosage units of Schedule II controlled substances, including Oxycodone HCl, Oxymorphone HCl, Oxycodone-Acetaminophen and Hydrocodone-Acetaminophen.
In addition, he also pleaded guilty to distributing more than 200,000 milliliters of Promethazine with Codeine, a Schedule V controlled substance.
He was ordered to forfeit about $1.2 million after federal agents seized it as they were investigating.
Co-defendant Omar Madison pleaded guilty to a drug trafficking conspiracy charge. On Feb. 7, he was sentenced to 72 months in prison.