PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A former doctor will plead guilty to
illegally prescribing anabolic steroids and human growth hormone to
patients she never met or examined, her lawyer said Monday.
Ana Maria Santi reached an agreement with prosecutors and plans
to plead guilty June 1 to 29 counts of health care fraud,
conspiracy and illegal drug distribution in federal court in
Providence, said her attorney, Edward C. Roy.
"It's in her best interests," Roy said.
Prosecutors say Santi and other doctors were enlisted by Daniel
McGlone, the president of New Jersey-based American Pharmaceutical
Group, to write prescriptions for bodybuilders and other customers
from April 2004 until August 2006.
Santi, who was stripped of her New York medical license in 1999,
forged the signature of a doctor living in a California nursing
home on the prescriptions she wrote, prosecutors said. She is
suspected of earning $25 for each prescription.
The plea agreement says Santi wrote prescriptions on behalf of
at least three companies besides American Pharmaceutical Group.
Prosecutors have agreed to recommend a reduced sentence for
Santi, but Roy said he did not know what that would be. Santi also
is awaiting sentencing in New York in a state case involving
similar allegations.
The maximum prison sentence for all 29 counts is 155 years.
Tom Connell, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Rhode
Island, declined to comment on the plea agreement.
McGlone is charged with advertising steroids and human growth
hormone to bodybuilders and other customers and then paying doctors
to write medically unnecessary prescriptions. He has pleaded not
guilty.
Another doctor, Victor Mariani, pleaded guilty in March for his
role.
Prosecutors say that once McGlone received the prescriptions
from Santi and Mariani, he would send them to be filled by other
pharmacies, including Orlando, Fla.-based Signature Pharmacy.
While Signature Pharmacy is not charged in the Rhode Island
case, two of its owners have been indicted in a case brought by
prosecutors in Albany, N.Y.
Linked to that case, in various reports, are a number of sports
stars, including baseball's Gary Matthews Jr., former heavyweight
champion Evander Holyfield and 1996 Olympic wrestling gold medalist
Kurt Angle.
The use or distribution of human growth hormone is restricted
under federal law to specified medical uses, such as wasting
disease associated with AIDS. It is not approved for bodybuilding
or weight-loss treatments.