Charlotte doctor and wife get prison in opioid scheme that left patient dead, feds say
A former doctor in Charlotte is going to prison after prosecutors said he arranged for patients to split their painkiller prescriptions with his wife, prosecutors said.
David Francis Lelio, 57, was sentenced Friday to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty in August to conspiring to distribute prescription opioids and making a false statement to investigators, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia said in a news release.
His wife, Nadja Siiri Kujanson-Lelio, 51, was sentenced to six months of home detention and three years of supervised release, prosecutors said.
“Dr. Lelio, with the help of his wife, used his medical license to take advantage of patients to illegally obtain opioids for themselves,” U.S. Attorney Daniel P. Bubar said in the release. “Sadly, instead of helping to fight the scourge of opioids, they only contributed to it.”
The alleged scheme began to unravel on Valentine’s Day in 2019, when prosecutors said first responders discovered a 63-year-old man dead from an apparent overdose at a home in rural southwest Virginia.
An autopsy report revealed the man, Michael Miles, died from a combination of fentanyl and heroin, court documents state. His 33-year-old son Joseph Miles was with him at the time.
At the house, investigators found “syringes, heroin, painkillers and unfilled prescriptions in Miles’ name” as well as a driver’s license bearing the address of his doctor, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.
Lelio and his wife arrived at the home from Charlotte while agents were conducting the death investigation, according to court filings. It took another eight months for prosecutors to charge him.
Kickback pills
According to court fillings, Joseph Miles knew the Lelios for some time. But it wasn’t until a car accident left him with pain that he became a patient in 2016.
Joseph Miles told investigators Lelio offered to write him prescriptions for oxycontin and oxycodone — highly addictive painkillers — if he agreed to split the bottles with Lelio’s wife. Prosecutors said Joseph Miles agreed, believing Lelio wouldn’t continue to prescribe him the medication if he didn’t agree to the split.
Michael Miles was eventually looped in, though Nadja Lelio reportedly “got upset” at having to split the prescriptions three ways, according to court filings.
Joseph and Michael Miles often drove from Virginia to Charlotte to give Nadja Lelio a portion of the pills, but prosecutors said the husband and wife also came to them. A Walgreens pharmacy in Mount Airy became their regular meeting point, the Observer reported.
Investigators found countless text messages on Joseph Miles’ phone between him and Nadja Lelio coordinating drop-offs in the weeks before Michael Miles’ death, court filings show.
“Hopefully the 6 and the other I think it was 26 will take u two through Monday. I hope it’s OK, I kept 2 pinks and 1 blue for myself,” she said in one message.
But Lelio, who worked for Atrium Health from 2003 to 2018, denied the arrangement in an interview with investigators in August 2019. He said he’d left the hospital when the work became “too taxing” and started seeing patients from his home, mostly for free.
When investigators asked him about his qualifications for pain management, Lelio reportedly told them he’d read several articles and “feels comfortable with it,” court documents state.
Less than two weeks later, investigators spoke with the Lelios’ longtime neighbor and a recent patient. She told them — and later a grand jury — that Lelio treated her for depression and would prescribe opioids in her name for his wife, saying she knew of the “horrendous pain” Nadja Lelio was in from multiple knee surgeries.
“(I) just did it as a friend,” she told the grand jury, according to court documents. “I let him write the prescriptions for me as a friend for Nadja.”
A plea for leniency
David and Nadja Lelio were charged in October 2019 and pleaded guilty in August this year, court filings show. According to the North Carolina Medical Board, Lelio’s license expired in September and is currently listed as “inactive.”
The couple’s defense attorneys declined to comment in emails to McClatchy News on Friday, but court filings show they pushed for lenient sentences.
Lelio’s attorneys said he didn’t prescribe the painkillers for selfish reasons but out of “his sincerely-held and understandable belief — informed by his medical training and experience — that diverting oxycodone to Mrs. Lelio, while illegal, would avoid the greater harm of allowing her to live in agony.”
They sought a punishment of between two and five years split between prison and home confinement, court documents state.
Defense attorneys for Nadja Lelio requested a period of home confinement, citing her “numerous serious and painful health conditions” that require surgery.
“Although drug dependence is not ordinarily a grounds for departure, under the facts of this case, Mrs. Lelio developed her dependence involuntarily, during the course of legal and medically-appropriate treatment,” court filings state. “The offense conduct occurred during a period where her orthopedist abandoned her and she had no medical option to treat her acute pain.”
