After 16 hours of deliberation, a jury in the U.S. District Court in Abingdon found Dr. Joel Smithers guilty of 467 counts of federal drug violations.
Those charges stemmed from Smithers, a doctor based in Martinsville, illegally prescribing Schedule II drugs including oxymorphone, oxycodone, hydromorphone, and fentanyl.
“Patients trust doctors to make decisions based on their healthcare needs, not a perversion of their own greed,” Acting United States Attorney Zachary T. Lee said after the conviction. “For many years, this defendant betrayed the trust placed in him by his patients, his community, and the medical profession as a whole through his illegal distribution of thousands of medically unnecessary opioids.
According to evidence presented at trial, after Smithers opened the Martinsville office in August 2015, he prescribed controlled substances to every patient in his practice. The prosecution argued the doctor caused over 500,000 Schedule II controlled substances to be distributed.
The prosecution noted that most of Smithers’ patients traveled hundreds of miles, one-way, to get drugs. Smithers did not accept insurance and took in over $700,000 in cash and credit card payments before a search warrant being executed at his office on March 7, 2017, the prosecution noted.
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A DEA investigation report shows a Kentucky man named Darryl Williams admitted seeing Smithers and directing 15 to 20 other people to see him. Williams reported that Smithers charged them $300 cash and advised them which pharmacies to use to fill their prescriptions.
Williams also told authorities during a period when Smithers office was closed for remodeling, he would text the doctor who then sent prescriptions for him and others via FedEx and UPS. Upon receipt, he would send payment with Walmart money orders.
In the DEA report, another individual said “he/she” began seeing Smithers at in Beaver, WV clinic and after he closed that he/she continued seeing him in Martinsville. He/She told authorities Smithers was prescribing Roxicodone 10, 15, or 30 mg for “non-medical necessity” but at one point said it was “safer” to prescribe oxymorphone because he thought the DEA was watching him. This source also reported receiving some prescriptions via FedEx and going to a pharmacy recommended by Smithers, sometimes with groups of 3-4 people, all with Schedule II prescriptions.
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Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares described Smithers’ operation as a pill mill and said it violates one of the first principles of the Hippocratic Oath: to do no harm. “Joel Smithers did not seek to treat patients but rather sought to destroy lives for profit,” the AG said.
Smithers was previously convicted of these charges in 2019, but the Supreme Court changed the law concerning jury instructions in cases involving illegal distribution of controlled substances by health care providers leading to a new trial, which also ended with conviction.
Smithers was charged with one count of maintaining a place for the purpose of illegally distributing controlled substances. That carries a maximum sentence of 20 years and a fine of $500,000. The other 466 counts of illegally prescribing Schedule II controlled substances each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years and a fine of $1 million.
Smithers sentencing is scheduled for March 3, 2025. He has been incarcerated since his 2019 conviction.
