Miami doctor accused of prescribing millions of Oxycodone pills sold on streets: feds
When longtime South Florida doctor Daniel Alberto Carpman was arrested two years ago, federal authorities accused him of writing thousands of the same Oxycodone prescriptions for elderly patients over and over, even though they didn’t need them to treat their pain.
Instead, the patients filled the prescriptions at local pharmacies and sold the powerful painkillers to a Hialeah-based distribution ring protected by a corrupt federal agent — one who happened to practice the Cuban religion of Santeria with the lead Oxycodone dealer.
For his valuable signature, Carpman made $5 million in consulting and other fees by seeing patients recruited by the ring of street dealers over five years, a prosecutor said Tuesday during opening statements at the doctor’s federal trial in Miami.
Prosecutor Christopher Clark said Carpman prescribed up to 120 30 mg Oxycodone pills a month for each patient, as he held up a bottle of painkillers with a street value of $3,600. Millions of them ended up on Miami-Dade’s streets.
“You can only imagine the damage that this caused,” Clark told the 12-person jury.
Carpman’s defense attorney told jurors that the 71-year-old Miami doctor’s case may sound “strange,” but he did not commit a crime because he was practicing “legitimate medicine,” treating his patients for pain and legally prescribing the pills.
“Everything about this conspiracy [allegation] is wrong,” said Mycki Ratzan, arguing the government’s evidence lacks proof of criminal intent.
Oxycodone pills at heart of charges
After his arrest in late April 2023, Carpman pleaded not guilty to a conspiracy to distribute and dispense Oxycodone pills to patients along with four related charges.
He was granted a $250,000 bond with strict conditions, including giving up his state license to practice medicine, paying a $37,500 nonrefundable deposit, confinement to his Brickell Avenue high-rise condo, GPS electronic monitoring and turning over his U.S. and Argentine passports.
The previous year, the Miami doctor got off lightly when he reached a settlement agreement with the Florida Board of Medicine for prescribing large doses of the addictive painkiller Oxycodone to a patient. Carpman paid a fine of $7,500 and administrative costs of about $10,000. A “letter of concern” was also placed in his file at the state Department of Health, but he was still allowed to practice medicine.
Although Carpman was charged alone, his case is linked to a network of about 10 people implicated in a massive Miami-Dade painkiller pill-mill ring that unlawfully sold millions of dollars’ worth of Oxycodone, the generic name for the highly addictive opioid, according to court records and prosecutors. Almost all of those defendants — including a Hialeah doctor who was the ring’s alleged go-to physician before Carpman — already pleaded guilty and were sentenced to various prison terms.
Federal agent convicted
In addition, a U.S. Health and Human Services agent faced trial in 2023 on charges of conspiring to distribute Oxycodone, witness tampering and obstruction of justice, while protecting members of the pill-mill racket with tips on enforcement actions. A few cooperating members of that ring testified against the agent, Alberico Ahias Crespo, who was acquitted by a federal jury of the distribution-conspiracy charge but convicted of the corruption charges. Crespo was sentenced to eight years in prison in early 2024.
Crespo was sentenced to more prison time than the distribution ring’s leader, Jorge Diaz Gutierrez, who was like a father figure to Crespo. He received just over six years in prison after pleading guilty to distributing painkillers and obstructing justice in a cooperation deal that required his testimony.
The two were so tight that Diaz rented an efficiency apartment behind the agent’s Hialeah home and became his “babalawo,” or high priest, during Santeria religious rituals. But at trial, Diaz incriminated Crespo while testifying about numerous court-approved wiretap recordings of their cellphone conversations in the FBI-led investigation.
Now, Diaz will be a key witness against Carpman at his trial this week.
Operated Coral Way clinic
The Carpman indictment accuses the doctor of operating a pain management clinic, Donate Medical Center, on Coral Way in Miami and illegally distributing and dispensing Oxycodone between September 2018 and March 2023. The indictment accuses Carpman of distributing and dispensing “a controlled substance [Oxycodone] through prescriptions that were issued without a legitimate medical purpose by a practitioner acting outside the usual course of professional practice.”
The indictment was built upon the related Oxycodone conspiracy case, which resulted in the conviction of Diaz as well as his partners, Yandre Trujillo Hernandez and Anais Lorenzo.
Court records show that Diaz, Trujillo and Lorenzo distributed Oxycodone prescribed by a doctor who ran two pain management clinics, including West Medical Office in Hialeah.
Dr. Rudolph Gonzalez-Garcia, charged in a separate healthcare fraud conspiracy case, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Four other defendants were also charged in his case, including three who pleaded guilty and served short prison terms.
This story was originally published April 1, 2025 at 3:05 PM.
