Benjamin Jamal Washington, 25, of Hyattsville, Maryland, pleaded guilty to leading a long-running scheme in which dozens of medical doctors’ personal information was stolen and then used to create fraudulent e-prescribing accounts, which his accomplices then used to issue thousands of fraudulent prescriptions of controlled substances. Washington remains in federal custody. According to his plea agreement, from September 2020 to May 2023, Washington and his co-conspirators obtained personal identifying information (PII) belonging to dozens of doctors, including their names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, National Provider Identification number, and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Registration Numbers. After obtaining this information, the co-conspirators impersonated the victims by obtaining fake drivers’ licenses in their names. They also paid corrupt telephone company employees to perform illegal subscriber identity module (SIM) swaps—fraudulently inducing a phone carrier to reassign a cell phone number from the legitimate subscriber to a phone controlled by the co-conspirators—to gain access to the physicians’ phone numbers.
Washington and his co-conspirators then used the fraudulent drivers’ licenses and the stolen phone numbers to open fraudulent e-prescribing accounts in the physicians’ names. At least one co-conspirator spoke with a pharmacy technician to understand the patterns and practices of physicians submitting e-prescriptions so Washington and his co-conspirators could avoid detection and issue more fraudulent prescriptions. Once the co-conspirators opened the fraudulent e-prescribing accounts, Washington and others used the accounts to submit at least 5,600 fraudulent prescriptions of controlled substances, including illegal prescriptions of oxycodone and promethazine with codeine. The co-conspirators then traveled to pharmacies across the United States, including pharmacies within the Los Angeles area, to pick up the illegally prescribed controlled substances, which they sold for a significant profit.