A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a drug-dealing doctor who was once California’s top prescriber of narcotic painkillers and other commonly abused drugs to seven years in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge S. James Otero said he was being somewhat lenient on Nazar Al Bussam, 72, because he did not want the physician to die in prison.
During the hearing, Otero said he had read what he characterized as “very troubling” disclosures in a Los Angeles Times report that linked Al Bussam to the deaths of three patients to whom he had prescribed drugs and two other people who had drugs prescribed by him in their possession.
Authorities did not discover those deaths during their three-year probe of Al Bussam, who they said generated nearly $2 million in cash while recklessly prescribing addictive narcotics to drug addicts and dealers.
Prosecutors brought The Times article to the judge’s attention, saying they thought Otero should be aware of it, but did not seek to enter it as evidence or to postpone sentencing to conduct further investigation.
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