Ladera Ranch Physician Assistant Pleads To Selling Oxycodone

Mission Viejo CA

18 November, 2020

6:13 PM

Description

LADERA RANCH, CA — A former physician assistant at a Fountain Valley medical clinic pleaded guilty today to a federal charge that he conspired to issue and sell prescriptions for oxycodone, a highly addictive opioid painkiller, without a medical purpose, to drug dealers, knowing the drugs would be sold on the street. He faces up to 20 years in prison if he receives full penalty for the crime. Raif Wadie Iskander, 54, formerly of Ladera Ranch and most recently a resident of Ennis, Montana, pleaded guilty via videoconference to one count of conspiracy to distribute oxycodone. Iskander, a licensed physician assistant in California, wrote prescriptions for "patients" he had never met or examined between 2018 and 2019 his plea agreement reads. Among those he wrote script for included an undercover law enforcement officer. Iskander provided to drug dealers multiple paper prescriptions that he had signed, but with the patient names left blank, to be filled in by drug dealers later. In exchange for cash, Iskander wrote fraudulent oxycodone prescriptions for co-defendants Johnny Gilbert Alvarez, 40, a.k.a. "M.J.," of Santa Ana, and Adam Anton Roggero, 37, of Costa Mesa, who sold the prescribed drugs on the street as well as to an undercover officer, according to the plea agreement. He admitted he knew that the oxycodone filled from the prescriptions would be sold to drug customers who were not using the oxycodone for legitimate medical purposes and whom defendant had never met or examined. United States District Judge James V. Selna has scheduled an April 26, 2021 sentencing hearing, at which time Iskander will face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. In October, Roggero pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute oxycodone. Alvarez is scheduled to go to trial on March 9, 2021.