Bridgeport Mayor Mario Blount
CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — An oxymorphone prescription allegedly filled last July by Bridgeport Mayor Mario Blount was written at eight times the allowable amount, and for a man who died three years earlier.
That’s according to a court filing by Assistant U.S. Attorney John C. Parr that gives a deeper glimpse of the government’s case as it seeks to buffer a defense motion to suppress. The suppression motion was filed by the lawyer for one of Blount’s codefendants, Angela Davis, in an alleged prescription drug distribution conspiracy.
A Bridgeport Best Care Pharmacy technician who isn’t charged told the commander of the Greater Harrison Drug and Violent Crimes Task Force about the July 6, 2013, transaction, according to Parr’s filing. The technician’s conversation with the lawman occurred Jan. 6.
Angela Davis brought in the prescription for 720 of the powerful pain-relieving pills in the name of her son, James Matthew Davis, the technician allegedly told the commander.
The technician’s interview was preapproved by Best Care Pharmacy’s lawyer, Mike Benninger, according to Parr’s filing.
The technician “had a specific recollection that Ms. Davis had brought the script in the morning shortly after the store opened and presented it directly to Blount and that he had charged her account for the prescription,” Parr wrote.
“She knew the script was a problem because James Matthew Davis had died almost three years earlier, prior to the prescription being filled,” Parr wrote. According to a footnote to Parr’s filing, James Matthew Davis died Aug. 10, 2010.
The prescription was for a six-month supply, to be taken three times daily, which should have raised one red flag, Parr’s filing indicates. That’s because the math should have added up to 540 pills, not 720 as marked on the script, according to the filing.
Additionally, oxymorphone is part of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Schedule II controlled substance grouping, the filing notes. Prescriptions for Schedule II substances can only be written for a one-month supply (90 pills at three times a day), and patients must visit their doctors each month to get another prescription, the filing indicates.
“Of other note, the normal charge for that many pills had been overridden by Mr. Blount, who lowered the cost of the pills to Ms. Davis before charging her account for her deceased son’s prescription,” Parr wrote.
Additional investigation resulted in the physician who purportedly signed the prescription, a doctor from Martins Ferry, Ohio, advising the script wasn’t written by him “and was fraudulent,” Parr wrote.
The commander also alleged that other prescriptions reportedly written by that doctor and filled at the Bridgeport Best Care Pharmacy all had the same signature except for the one handed in by Davis last July 6, according to Parr’s filing.
Other allegations in the filing…
