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By Matthew Russell Lee

SDNY COURTHOUSE, February 19 – It is rare for a defendant to take the witness stand, but it happened on February 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Ernesto Lopez MD was a long time internist who made a lucrative switch to pain management such that, according to the prosecution, he filed an amendment tax return for 2015 with $750,000 in income. That also happened to be the amount of cash found in shoeboxes in his house, along with fentanyl patches, in a November 2017 raid. Now he is on trial, apparently trying to blame his co-defendant for running a side business, and clarifying for example the cash wasn't only in shoeboxes but other boxes as well. He did his business in cash, seeing up to 20 patients a day, $200 each. Every day wasn't that good, he specified from the stand. At day's end he hobbled off on a cane. Tomorrow should see the summations and then the jury will have the case of the Oxy doc with the shoe- and other boxes full of cash. Inner City Press should be there. The U.S. Attorney's Office called it a proceeding of interest but it appeared Inner City Press was the only media present. Maybe it was the Excel log in spread sheets. Here's from the prosecutors' old press release: "From 2015 until October 2017, LOPEZ operated medical clinics located in Manhattan,New York; Jackson Heights, New York; and Franklin Square, New York, where LOPEZ wrote thousands of prescriptions for large quantities of oxycodone and fentanyl patches in exchange forcash payments. LOPEZ typically charged $200 to $300 in cash for “patient visits,” where LOPEZ performed no meaningful physical examination of patients. Instead, a typical “patient visit” consisted primarily of recording a patient’s vital signs and sometimes involved the brief movement of a patient’s limbs. LOPEZ then prescribed large quantities of oxycodone, most frequently 120 30-milligram tablets, and fentanyl patches. Between January 2015 and the present, LOPEZ wrotemore than 8,000 oxycodone prescriptions, resulting in an estimated $2 million in fees to LOPEZ." That's real money. The previous business day on February 15,when Gustavo Salvador pled guilty to selling oxycodone in The Bronx before SDNY Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, his two lawyers tried to argue for a suspended remand based on the cold in the MDC Brooklyn. Judge Engelmayer turned them down saying he had personal knowledge that the heat was back on; not surprising. Surprising, though, was that a Bronx oxy dealer was represented by the white shoe Goodwin Proctor law firm. Was it pro bono? Their representation goes back at least until Thanksgiving, before the MDC Brooklyn conditions became public. In the audience, a young child then a baby cried. The volume of oxy pills was in the thousands, according to the indictment. The sentencing guidelines run from 57 to 71 months. Judge Engelmayer said he said something else on his schedule coming up, should the sentencing be rescheduled? It went forward. Goodwin Proctor.

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