Joel Smithers is a 36 years old doctor from Virginia who just received a 40-years long imprisonment in jail on Wednesday, October 2, 2019 for prescribing more than half a million doses of highly addictive oxycodone, hydromorphone, fentanyl and opioids in just two years when he started his small medical office in Martinsville, Virginia in 2015. The doctor was sentenced for 40 years that included a 20 years minimum sentence for his conviction for prescribing opioids that caused the death of a woman in West Virginia. He has also been assessed $86,000 fine in addition.
What is Joel Smithers Known for?
- Smithers is known as the educated doctor who illegally prescribed more than half a dozen of drugs to his patients.
When and Where was Joel Smithers Born?
Joel Smithers was born in 1983 A.D. in Virginia, United States. His birth name is Joel Smithers. His nationality is American. Smithers belongs to White ethnicity. Joel Smithers earned his medical degree from the DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine at Lincoln Memorial University in 2012.
Is Joel Smithers Married?
Dr. Joel Smithers is a married man. He is the father of his five children.
What are Joel Smithers’s Allegations?
Dr. Joel Smithers is alleged of distributing very highly addictive opioid drugs to his patients who didn’t even need that and gave out more than 500,000 Schedule II controlled substances in less than two years. Dr. Smithers handed out the drugs without a legitimate medical purpose and that also was operating “beyond the bounds of medical practice”.
Smithers lost his right to practice medicine after the case was alleged to him and later due to his harsh behaviors towards people’s health, the Virginia Board of Medicine formally suspended his medical license.
He opened his own Virginia practice back in 2015 and within two years he prescribed the highly addictive substances to like almost half a million people as reported after his office was raided in 2017.
Also, out of all of those deaths in 2017, it was reported that around 68% of the death was linked to prescription or an illicit opioid.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC), more than 700,000 people died in the United States from drug overdoses between 1999 and 2017, including 70,000 in 2017 alone.
How Long is Joel Smithers Sentenced for?
The Martinsville-based doctor, Joel Smithers is currently sentenced for 40 long years in prison after the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia handed down the sentence after a nine-day jury trial in a courtroom in Abingdon. The sentence includes a minimum of 20 years for Smithers’conviction for prescribing opioids that caused the death of a woman in West Virginia.
Smithers was convicted by a jury in May 2019, on 861 federal drug charges — including one count of possessing with the intent to distribute controlled substances and one count of maintaining a place for the purpose of unlawfully distributing controlled substances.
How Much Does Dr. Joel Smithers Earn?
Joel Smithers earned quiet great earnings from his career as a professional doctor. Along with his career, he even managed to amass a great fortune of the amount in thousands of dollars from his illegal act of prescribing his patients with very highly addictive drugs and cashing amount in his pocket.
After a search warrant was executed at his office in March 2017, Smithers had managed to amass a $700,000 payment in cash and credit cards.
Smithers called out his patients to get opioids from different parts of the world including Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. As soon as they become addicted they began buying the drugs in huge amount thus pocketing him a great amount. Surely with years of practicing illegal act, he must have managed to get a fortune in million dollars.
However, after his license was suspended the court document fined him an $86,000 which was ordered to be paid in full. He also faces a maximum fine of more than $200 million dollars.
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