Online Doctor Who Wrote 'Purple Drank' Prescriptions Gets 3 Years In Prison: DOJ

LOS ANGELES, CA — A former doctor accused of acting more like a drug dealer than a legitimate physician through his Los Angeles-based telemedicine practice was sentenced Monday to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to narcotics charges, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Raphael Tomas Malikian, 39, pleaded guilty in October to one count of aiding and abetting the acquisition of a controlled substance by fraud and one count of distribution of oxycodone. Malikian, who lives in Llano and Palmdale, was ordered to pay a $20,000 fine and serve three years supervised release following his 37-month prison sentence, according to federal prosecutors.

Malikian also owned and operated Happy Family Medicine, a clinic advertised as being in a co-working space in Hollywood that primarily offered telehealth services via phone and text. Malikian wrote prescriptions for painkillers and other often-abused drugs without obtaining patients' full medical history, conducting exams or tests, or verifying their identities. Additionally, he allowed customers to obtain prescriptions in the names of other people, according to his plea agreement.

Malikian worked with two co-conspirators who provided him with false names, addresses and dates of birth under which Malikian wrote prescriptions for controlled substances. The co-conspirators then filled the prescriptions and sold the drugs on the black market, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Many of his prescriptions contained notes to pharmacists that they should not verify the prescriptions because the medications were urgently needed and failure to dispense them could be life threatening due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to prosecutors.

Malikian issued hundreds of false prescriptions for liquid promethazine with codeine, including to people he knew were fictitious. The prescriptions totaled more than 82 liters of the drug mixture, according to prosecutors. Promethazine with codeine is used as a recreational drug; its users often add it to soda to create a drink known as lean, purple drank or sizzurp.

Between April and July 2020, Malikian prescribed to a buyer 702 10 mg pills of oxycodone and 240 milliliters of promethazine with codeine. The buyer was an undercover law enforcement officer, according to prosecutors.

Between May and July 2020, Malikian prescribed to a customer, also an undercover officer, 234 pills of the painkiller Norco and 180 pills of Xanax, prosecutors said.

In both instances, Malikian issued the prescriptions without conducting proper medical evaluations or verifying the patients' identities and the prescriptions were "performed outside the scope of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

The Medical Board of California suspended Malikian’s medical license in November 2021. His license expired in November 2022, according to prosecutors.