Marlboro opiate fraud defendant pleads guilty, awaits sentencing

An admitted drug pusher from Marlboro might wind up in prison for seven years, for dealing oxycodone that he got with bogus prescriptions written by a doctor.

David Roth, 43, pleaded guilty Friday to illegally distributing the painkiller, according to information from New Jersey Attorney General John J. Hoffman's office. Dr. Eugene Evans, 56, of Roselle Park, admitted on April 24 that he wrote the scrips.

Investigators with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) New Jersey Field Division Tactical Diversion Squad and the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice Prescription Fraud Investigative Strike Team led the probe.

Between January 2012 and March 2014, Roth got thousands of high-dosage 30-milligram tablets on prescriptions written by Evans, using identities of people Evans never examined, treated or even met, investigators said. Roth accumulated a group of people willing to have their names on prescriptions, and Evans wrote multiple scrips for each all at once, investigators said.

Roth paid his recruits, and Evans, with either cash or prescription narcotics, or both, and sold the tablets for $20 or $30, authorities said. Evans is believed to have authorized the release of more than 20,000 pills thorugh presciptions for more than a dozen individuals

On April 24 of this year, Evans entered a guilty plea for a second-degree charge of distribution of a controlled dangerous substance. He surrendered his medical license. Prosecutors seek a five-year prison term.

The same day that Evans pleaded guilty, Harold Nyhus, 53, of Freehold, admitted filling bogus oxycodone prescriptions that Evans issued his name and another name. For his guilt plea to a third-degree charge of obtaining a controlled dangerous substance by fraud, prosecutors seek a three-year term.

Sentencing for both is scheduled for June 26.

In a prepared statement, Hoffman characterized Roth and Evans as conspirators in spreading a gateway drug that is taking "far too many people in New Jersey...down the road of opiate addiction," raising the risk of heroin abuse and death.

"We're putting this drug dealer and the doctor who supplied him in prison, where they no longer will be able to callously profit by diverting these potentially deadly pills into the black market," Hoffman said.