Wyoming: Kahn Brothers Found Guilty in Drug Conspiracy Case

Kahn “preyed on” addicted people for years, and the verdict confirmed that a person’s profession does not put them above the law.***

(Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Sprecher)

 
One more story about ‘new Americans’ getting rich (for awhile) by dealing in controlled substances ostensibly for pain management.  Ho hum!  So what else is new?

However, this story interested me for the primary reason that it is from Wyoming (not Michigan! not California! not any state where large numbers of new Americans are selling drugs, or dirty docs are prescribing them!).
By the way, and unrelated to this story, is the fact that Wyoming is the only state in the nation that doesn’t resettle refugees.
Also, interesting is the fact that Dr. Shakeel Kahn’s wife, originally a patient, then a ‘wife’ and partner in the crime, became a witness for the prosecution after their arrest in one of their several homes.
People traveled from faraway states to Wyoming to pick up their illegal drug prescriptions.
Additionally, Kahn was implicated in the death of one patient from Arizona.

Here is the news from the Casper Star Tribune, thanks to a reader for sending it.  (But, see below a couple of other stories that provide more information.)

Jury finds Casper doctor guilty of running illicit drug ring, contributing to woman’s overdose death

 

Brindley (attorney for Dr. Kahn) returned the form to Judge Alan Johnson and walked back to a defense table in Casper’s federal courthouse. He shared whispers with his client, Dr. Shakeel Kahn, before Johnson read the form aloud to the courtroom.
By the time Johnson completed his recitation, Kahn had been found guilty of all 21 felonies he faced, including an enhancement holding him responsible for the 2015 death of an Arizona woman. Two of the convictions — conspiracy to unlawfully distribute and dispense controlled substances resulting in death and engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise — carry a minimum sentence of 20 years imprisonment and a maximum of life.

The jury also found Kahn guilty of eight counts of unlawful distribution or dispensing of oxycodone, a single count of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a federal drug trafficking crime, five counts of using a telephone to commit or facilitate a felony drug crime, three counts of aiding or abetting the possession of oxycodone with intent to distribute, and two counts of money laundering.
Jurors determined the doctor’s brother, Nabeel — whose last name is alternately spelled Khan and Kahn in court documents — was guilty of both felonies he faced: one of conspiracy and one firearms charge. Jurors did not find Nabeel Kahn responsible for the Arizona woman’s death and their rejection of the enhancement to the conspiracy charge was the sole defense victory in the verdict.
After the judge had read the jury’s finding, the doctor’s wife, Lyn Kahn, broke into tears in the audience. A U.S. marshal asked Lyn Kahn, who testified for the prosecution during the nearly monthlong trial, to leave before marshals led the two men from the courtroom.
Nabeel Kahn, two steps ahead of his brother, muttered, “It’s not over yet,” before walking through swinging doors and toward incarceration.
[….]
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Sprecher told the Star-Tribune shortly after the conviction she was pleased with the verdict. Kahn “preyed on” addicted people for years, and the verdict confirmed that a person’s profession does not put them above the law, she said in a courthouse hallway.
The verdict marks the conclusion of an investigation that was first made public with federal agents’ arrest of the doctor in November 2016 at his Casper home, and a trial that spanned one day shy of a full month.
[….]
Among the prosecution’s witnesses were the doctor’s wife and two former patients who have also pleaded guilty to federal charges and agreed to testify against him.

In a story from April we learn that addicted people, and drug dealers, traveled thousands of miles for their prescriptions from Dr. Kahn,

The conspiracy stretched beyond Wyoming and Arizona, to Kentucky, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington state, prosecutors say. People traveled from as far as Massachusetts and Washington to the state to pick up and fill prescriptions written by Kahn, according to government lawyers. They allege Kahn wrote painkiller and anti-anxiety drug prescriptions for the Arizona woman, Jessica Burch, on which she overdosed and died in March 2015.

The 2016 story at the Patient Safety League also told us this,

The Kahn’s Casper properties include their Thorndike Avenue home, a medical office on South Fenway Street and a store called “Vape World of Casper” on 12th Street. The couple also owned two homes and a medical office in Fort Mohave, Arizona. Between May 2012 and August 2016, the couple deposited more than $1.5 million in cash into their bank accounts.

 
***Doctor?
As is the case so often, there is no information about the Kahn brothers immigration status.
All I could find is this reference to Dr. Kahn as supposedly having gotten his medical degree in Belize (Central America Health Sciences University) and another reference to receiving his license to practice medicine in Wyoming in 2007. That would mean that he had nearly a decade to ruin a bunch of peoples’ lives before the feds caught up with him.

As I have said on many previous occasions, please contact authorities if you suspect a pain doctor is in some way harming you or a family member, or ripping off Medicare or Medicaid.

If I were advising the President, I would tell him to brag about the number of major cases the feds (his administration!) are busting fighting the Opioid crisis and those involving Medicare/Medicaid fraud because stories like this one rarely get beyond the media within the state.  Imagine the traction the stories would get if the Prez tweeted even one fraud bust a week!
Maybe it would force the mainstream media to occasionally cover news like this (rather than ‘news’ about what Trump might have said about Prince Harry’s wife)!  I can dream!