Deadly Opioid Prescriptions Land Queens Doctor In Jail

FLUSHING, QUEENS – A doctor whose illegal prescriptions for opioids led to three deaths has been jailed for seven years, prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Lawrence Choy, a kidney and internal medicine specialist based in Flushing, sold scripts for dangerous amounts and combinations of drugs, Bridget G. Brennan, New York City’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor, said.

In one case a patient, Eliot Castillo, 35, was found in his Jamaica, Queens, home after overdosing on a lethal combination of oxycodone and the anxiety drug alprazolam that he'd been prescribed by Choy three days earlier.

In another, Michael Ries, 30, of Long Island, was found dead after overdosing on oxycodone, alprazolam and the muscle relaxant carisoprodol. First responders found several empty pill bottles at the scene, all prescribed by Choy. They later found the doctor had prescribed 24 pills a day, with a morphine content three times that recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Choy was convicted of two counts of manslaughter, five counts of reckless endangerment - one of which resulted in a death - and 27 counts of criminal sale of a prescription for a controlled substance.

He was arrested in Wisconsin where he had fled after abandon in practice, Brennan said. He pleaded guilty in June this year.

Brennan said, “While today’s sentencing cannot erase the harm caused by Lawrence Choy, it may bring closure to families who lost loved ones and hope to patients who looked to him for treatment and instead developed addiction.”

Queens Acting District Attorney John M. Ryan said, “Dispensing opioid drugs like popcorn at a movie theater is partially to blame for the epidemic of deadly overdoses that has gripped this country in the last several years.