Pain Doctor Sentenced to Prison for Illegally Prescribing Opiates

RICHMOND, Va. – A Henrico man was sentenced today to 57 months in prison for unlawfully prescribing Oxycodone and Tramadol to patients at a Richmond-area pain management practice.

According to court documents, Dr. Zeljko Stjepanovic, 59, worked in a pain management practice, initially in Fredericksburg and later in Henrico County. Stjepanovic admitted that between 2014 and 2018 he wrote prescriptions for several patients without assessing the individual needs of those patients, and that his prescribing practices were outside the usual course of his professional practice and were without any legitimate medical purpose.

Authorities opened an investigation of Stjepanovic following numerous complaints from area pharmacies about his prescribing practices. As part of that investigation, two undercover officers, Patient 1 and Patient 2, made a total of four visits to Stjepanovic.  

On at least two of those occasions, Stjepanovic prescribed Tramadol for Patient 1, but put the prescription in the name of Patient 2. Before the first instance, Stjepanovic notified both Patient 1 and Patient 2 that he knew what he was doing was illegal, but he proposed doing it nonetheless. On one of these occasions, Patient 1 was not even present when Stjepanovic wrote the Tramadol prescription. At no point did Stjepanovic or anyone working on his behalf ever obtain a medical history for Patient 1, conduct any physical examination or range of motion test for the patient, discuss causes of pain or what might alleviate it, consider any non-medicine based alternative treatments, or obtain or analyze any urine samples. Stjepanovic maintained no records for his treatment of Patient 1 on these two occasions.

On both of the occasions when Stjepanovic wrote a prescription for Patient 1 in the name of Patient 2, Stjepanovic also wrote a prescription for Oxycodone for Patient 2. As was the case with Patient 1, at no point did Stjepanovic or anyone working on his behalf ever obtain a medical history for Patient 2, conduct any physical examination or range of motion test for the patient, discuss causes of pain or what might alleviate it, consider any non-medicine based alternative treatments, or obtain or analyze any urine samples. Nonetheless, Stjepanovic falsely reported in his records for Patient 2 that he had done these things.

In addition, because Stjepanovic was concerned that writing prescriptions for Tramadol and Oxycodone for the same person might alert others to his scheme, he instructed Patient 2 what to tell the pharmacy if questioned about the two prescriptions.

Numerous other patients explained that their encounters with Stjepanovic were much the same as the ones he had with the undercover officers. Thus, patients stated that Stjepanovic performed either no or perfunctory examinations, changed medications because of concerns he would be caught by DEA rather than for legitimate medical reasons, steered these patients from certain pharmacies for fear he would get in trouble for his prescriptions, and made knowingly false entries in his files for the patients.

G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Jesse R. Fong, Special Agent in Charge for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Washington Field Division, made the announcement after sentencing by Senior U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen W. Miller and Janet Jin Ah Lee prosecuted the case.

A copy of this press release is located on the website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Related court documents and information are located on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER by searching for Case No. 3:19-cr-027.