Rumson printer’s prescription authorization yanked in drug ring probe

Nelson Press, a Rumson printing firm, has lost its state authorization to generate prescription blanks as prosecutors build their case against a suspended Middletown Doctor.

Dr. Kenneth Lewandowski is accused of turning out prescriptions for oxycodone and other narcotic painkillers in what is described as a drug ring by investigators from the office of acting New Jersy Attorney General John J. Hoffman.

No one at the company has been criminally charged, but investigators charging Dr. Kenneth Lewandowski with writing prescriptions under a false identity believe that the company enabled him by failing to comply with security requirements.

Lewandowski was charged in December 2014 with conspiracy, forgery, and unlawful practice of medicine. Physician Assistant Ronald J. Scott was charged with unlicensed practice by Monmouth County investigators in March 2015, and his license to practice as a physician's assistant was suspended within days of his arrest.

Lewandowski's license had been suspended in April 2014. He had been charged with driving while intoxicated on three occasions in less than two months before the action, authorities said.

The investigation began with prescription data tracked in the New Jersey Prescription Monitoring Program (NJPMP), maintained by the state Division of Community Affairs (DCA). The service helps doctors and healthcare professionals find and report prescription fraud, authorities said.

Nelson Press received an order for 1,200 blanks in October 2014, which investigators accuse Lewandowski of placing under the identity of another doctor who had no idea his name was being used.

Lewandowski allegedly professed to the company that the doctor he used as a beard was employed in his practice, and submitted copies of the unwitting doctor's medical license and federal authorization to prescribe controlled dangers substances (CDS),  authorities said.

Not long afterward, Lewandowski allegedly ordered another 400 blanks under the doctor's identity as well as Scott's, and convinced the company that Scott was working under the other physician's aegis, investigators said.

According to prosecutors, Lewandowski and Scott approved the proofs, and no one verified Lewandowski's actual identity when he took possession of the blanks, knowing him only as "Ken."

The unnamed doctor found multiple presciptions for OxyContin and other narcotics that he never wrote, for recipients he didn't know, while routinely looking up his own prescriptions in NJPMP, investigators said.

The company's owner, also not identified in released information, admitted to investigators that the company never checked Lewandowski's identification, nor consulted with the doctor under whose name the orders were placed, and failed to deliver the blanks to either the doctor's address or to Scott, as required under law.

Nelson Press can re-apply after a six-month suspension, and would be subject to a two-and-a-half-year probation period if approved, with independent operational audits every six months.