Doctor accused of peddling Oxycodone faces new charges

To hear prosecutors tell it, William J. O'Brien III was far from the most stringent doctor when it came to wielding his prescription pad.

"If you had a big bowl of Oxys, how many would you take?" he was caught asking one patient before prescribing her exactly the number she named in her response.

He once wrote a prescription for Oxycodone and Xanax to a 48-year-old man complaining of pain - from multiple pregnancies, menstruation, and a pap smear.

And when it came to women, all bets were off.

He offered a female undercover FBI agent depressants in exchange for oral sex - a proposal that proved more successful, federal authorities said, when he posed it to a couple of strippers seeking appointments at the behest of an outlaw motorcycle gang.

All three incidents have now become part of a superseding indictment unsealed Thursday against O'Brien and nine other defendants - part of the thickening legal morass into which the 50-year-old doctor has found himself sinking since January.

That month, federal authorities arrested him and his receptionist on suspicion of running a pill mill operation out of their offices in Philadelphia and Bucks County. They were accused of offering patients prescriptions for powerful opioids and sedatives for as little as $200 in cash.

But the new slate of charges paints O'Brien as more than just a penny-ante pill peddler.

Prosecutors say that together with members of the Pagan Motorcycle Club, he served as the supplier to a drug distribution network that raked in $5 million in street sales of prescription pills over three years - and led to the death of at least one of the doctor's patients.

According to the indictment, O'Brien's personal cut of that cash - an estimated $2 million - kept him in designer clothes, the fanciest restaurants, a luxury condominium in Philadelphia, and a coastal vacation home in Beach Haven, N.J.

All the while, he and his ex-wife, Elizabeth Hibbs, 54, who also worked for O'Brien's practice, were testifying in Bankruptcy Court that they were destitute and effectively homeless.

O'Brien has denied the charges against him and has remained in federal custody since his arrest in January. His lawyer, Greg Pagano, said Thursday he looked forward to the doctor's September trial date.

The allegations describe a remarkable fall for a doctor who ran in 1999 as a Democratic candidate for coroner in Bucks County and a decade later led a group of fellow physicians in a failed bid to purchase the financially strapped Lower Bucks Hospital.

The company O'Brien formed for that purchase - WJO Inc. - filed for bankruptcy in 2010. The doctor allegedly began his criminal career soon after.

He struck his deal with the Pagans in 2012, according to court filings. Members of the motorcycle club recruited patients - including dancers from the Oasis Gentlemen's Club in Southwest Philadelphia - to obtain pills from O'Brien that would later be resold on the streets.

As federal authorities describe it, the Pagans had the full run of O'Brien's practice. Bikers with nicknames such as "Redneck," "Petey Adams," and "Tomato Pie" routinely stopped by O'Brien's Levittown office, where he instructed employees to treat them like VIPs. They audited patient charts to ensure their recruits were handing over exactly the number of pills O'Brien had prescribed them.

When legitimate patients and some of O'Brien's employees complained about the Pagans' disruptive behavior, the doctor turned a blind eye, prosecutors said.

Meanwhile, O'Brien and Hibbs continued to fight over the assets of WJO in Bankruptcy Court with the court-appointed trustee - a man O'Brien described in court filings in that case as a "nefarious, malicious, [and] money-sucking" leech intent on "raping" his company. The trustee fired them both in 2012.

O'Brien now faces charges of drug distribution, conspiracy, and health-care fraud. Along with Hibbs, he faces additional counts of conspiracy, money laundering, and bankruptcy fraud.

Several members of the doctor's drug distribution ring, including Pagans members, have been charged with drug distribution counts.