Riverhead physician assistant sentenced to five years for oxycodone sales

Riverhead physician assistant Michael Troyan was sentenced to five years in federal prison, three years’ supervised release, and $710,290 forfeiture, by U.S. District Judge Denis R. Hurley this morning in Central Islip.

Troyan pleaded guilty on June 17 to conspiring to illegally distribute oxycodone.

Troyan, who operated two local urgent care clinics and was authorized to prescribe controlled substances, issued prescriptions for thousands of oxycodone pills to co-conspirators for the purpose of illegally re-selling the pills. During the government’s investigation, Troyan was captured on video in an undercover operation writing phony prescriptions at his Riverhead medical office for oxycodone and receiving large quantities of cash – half the profit from prior illegal sales. He was arrested in November 2015.

As part of his guilty plea, Troyan agreed to forfeit $710,290 attributable to illegal prescription sales.

One of Troyan’s co-conspirators was Southampton Town Councilman Bradley Bender, who was sentenced on June 24, 2016, to 24 months in prison for his role in the conspiracy. Bender’s resignation as a councilman was accepted by the Southampton Town Board on the day of his guilty plea, November 24, 2015.

“For years, Troyan supplied Bender and others with phony prescriptions for huge quantities of oxycodone pills, which Bender filled and illegally exchanged for cash and steroids with another co-conspirator. The oxycodone pills were then re-sold to drug abusers, sustaining the destructive abuse of opioid analgesics in our communities,” United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Robert Capers said in a press release.

“This sentence serves as a stern warning to all medical professionals entrusted with authority to prescribe controlled substances that there is a price to pay for such criminal conduct,” Capers said.

The probation department had recommended a 24-month sentence, to which the prosecutors vigorously objected, noting it was the same sentence meted out to Troyan’s “much less-culpable co-conspirator” Bender, who was sentenced on June 24.

“Troyan illegally prescribed oxycodone in exchange for cash, knowing that the pills would be sold to drug abusers over a four-year period. These drug abusers could have overdosed and died,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing request letter to the judge Jan. 18.

“They could have passed out behind the wheel and killed others. We see these stories play out on Long Island every day. As a physician assistant, Troyan was entrusted with prescription authority and he violated that trust in exchange for cash.”

Troyan was ordered to surrender to authorities on April 20.