The Middletown doctor who admitted running a prescription painkiller distribution network with his office manager heads to prison for as many as six years.

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Dr. Kenneth Lewandowski, 53, was sentenced Tuesday in Freehold, according to the office of acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Chris Gramiccioni. The sentence includes a two-year span of parole ineligibility.

Judge Joseph Oxley ordered revocation of Lewandowski's license to practice medicine, currently under suspension. The order includes a permanent ban on writing prescriptions for controlled dangerous substances.

Lewandowski, who maintained a practice in Red Bank, pleaded guilty in January of this year to a second-degree charge of distribution and dispensing of Oxycodone, and a third-degree count of unlawful practice of medicine.

In prepared remarks, Gramiccioni served notice on any doctors seeking to circumvent the law in dispensing narcotics.
"There is an epidemic of prescription opiates and heroin abuse that is killing people across the country and it is a priority for law enforcement across Monmouth County," Gramiccioni said.

The probe emerged in November 2014, when a Middletown pharmacist told township police that an individual presented a fraudulent prescription for Oxycodone.

Lewandowski told investigators that after his license suspension, he took possession of blank prescription sheets belonging to another doctor with whom he had discussed a business partnership.

He admitted getting 120 oxycodone tablets for each of four former patients, by forging prescriptions using the other doctor's prescription pad and identity.

Investigators in the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs also received a complaint from the doctor whose prescription sheets were being used without his awareness.

Lewandowski gave some of the blank scrips to Thomas Menendez, his office manager.

Menendez pleaded guilty Tuesday to a second-degree charge of distributing and dispensing Oxycodone, and third-degree counts of unlawful practice of medicine and conspiracy to distribute.

He admitted using the pills himself, selling to others, selling forged prescriptions to Lewandowski's former patients, and paying a third party to get an Oxycodone prescription from yet another doctor, with the understanding that he would take half the batch.

According to investigators, Lewandowski and Menendez obtained prescription pads belonging to a licensed doctor without the physician's consent, selling the blanks for cash with no medical needs assessment at $300 to $400 each, and combing the files in his Red Bank office for likely buyers.

Investigators said that Lewandowski also collaborated with physician's assistant Ronald Scott, 65, of Toms River, who allegedly wrote prescriptions for former patients without a licensed doctor's approval.

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