From 2010, until he was busted in 2017, the Maryland Board didn’t reveal how many prescriptions he wrote to waitresses and bartenders in Hooters or provided prescriptions to others when he failed to maintain medical records or give proper examinations.
Heroin Highway to Hell:
OPIOID EPIDEMIC & FATAL OVERDOSES START WITH PILL MILL DOCS / Dr. William “Skip” Vaughn’s Medical License Yanked Forever; Ran Pill Mill in High Rent Potomac
FACES TWENTY YEARS IN PRISON
Charged with supplying pills to four Hooters waitresses and patients of Potomac urgent-care center and adding to supply chain of opioids on the street
BALTIMORE, MD. – The medical career of a Howard University Medical School graduate has come to complete and total end as the defrocked Doc failed to learn from being busted in the District and banned in Maryland ten years ago and now has plunged off the cliff, never to come back to work as a physician in the United States.
The saga of Dr. Vaughn is another story of failure on the part of the Maryland Physicians Board to take action to remove incompetent or crooked doctors from practicing medicine in Maryland as the heroin epidemic sweeps the state and the nation.
After a federal grand jury indicted Dr. William Samuel Vaughn III, a/k/a “Skip,”, 62, of Largo, Maryland on Nov. 30, 2017, on charges of illegally prescribing narcotics to Hooters waitresses and participating in a pill mill posing as an urgent care facility in the pricey village of Potomac in Montgomery County, the Maryland Board of Physicians snatched his medical license for good on Feb. 8, 2018.
The saga of Dr. Vaughn is another story of failure on the part of the Maryland Physicians Board to take action to remove doctors from practicing medicine in Maryland as the heroin epidemic sweeps the state and the nation.
Maryland had yanked Dr. Vaughn’s license in 2008 in reciprocity with the District of Columbia after he was suspended in DC but took him off probation in 2010. Vaughn, a 1982 graduate of Howard, worked as an Emergency Room physician in Greater Southeast Hospital, gained a Maryland physicians license in 1992, and most recently worked at Potomac Prompt Medical Care which had been operating in a strip shopping center in Potomac, Md.
Two investigations began in Maryland in 2017, one in Montgomery County and another in Baltimore County. In Montgomery, the mother of a Hooter’s waitress complained that Dr. Vaughn was writing prescriptions for her daughter and another waitress while he was a customer at the bar.
On July 20, 2017, in a voluntary agreement with the DEA, he surrendered his federal drug permit to prescribe narcotics.
“I understand that beginning on the date that I sign below, I am not authorized to order, manufacture, distribute, possess, dispense, administer, prescribe, or engage in any other controlled substance activities whatsoever.”
That agreement might have been in writing, but apparently, Dr. Vaughn had his fingers crossed behind his back as according to the Maryland Physicians Board, he kept on providing prescriptions pills to the Hooters gals and patients at the Potomac Prompt facility in Montgomery County.
Prosecutors reported that Dr. Vaughn continued to prescribe CDS on several occasions after surrendering his DEA certificate of registration.
A Prescription Drug Monitoring Program printout received in response to an October 26, 2017, Board subpoena, reflected that Vaughn prescribed CDS on the following dates after surrendering his DEA certificate of registration:
- July 21, 2017, prescription for 30 tablets of phentermine, a Schedule IV CDS, to Patient D;
- July 21, 2017, prescription for 30 tablets of phentermine to Patient E;
- July 21, 2017, prescription for 30 tablets of phentermine to Patient F;
- July 21, 2017, prescription for 30 tablets of phentermine to Patient G;
- July 22, 2017, prescription for 30 tablets of zolpidem tartrate, a Schedule IV CDS, to Patient H;
- July 24, 2017, prescription for 120 tablets of alprazolam to Patient I;
- July 25, 2017, prescription for 150 tablets of oxycodone with acetaminophen to Patient J;
- July 28, 2017, prescription for 30 tablets of phentermine to Patient K;
- July 28, 2017, prescription for 30 tablets of phentermine to Patient L;
- July 28, 2017, prescription for 30 tablets of phentermine to Patient M;
- July 29, 2017, prescription for 30 tablets of carisoprodol, a Schedule IV CDS, to Patient N;
- August 8, 2017, prescription for 60 tablets of Vyvanse, a Schedule II CDS stimulant, to Patient O;
- September 25, 2017, prescription for 240 ccs of promethazine with codeine, a Schedule V CDS, to Patient P; and
- September 26, 2017, prescription for 30 tablets of phentermine to Patient Q.
Therefore, Vaughn was charged with writing prescriptions to waitresses in Hooters without any examination – possibly other than any other patron of the bar could observe of the scantily clad “servers”.
Without a standard medical examination or record keeping, the investigators for the FBI and the Montgomery County Police charged him with feeding more than 3,000 pills into the hands of four waitresses. Typically, such pill mills provide prescriptions to shills who then sell the pills to drug dealers who can sell the pills to addicts.
According to StreetRX.com, the value of a 10 mg pill of Adderall in Virginia on Feb. 9, 2018, was $15. Dosages of higher amounts go for more money on the street.
According to federal and state liens against Dr. Vaughn, he owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes, a sign of extreme financial circumstances and indicative of a physician that becomes involved in criminal rings dealing in opioid pill mills.
Crooked doctors providing prescriptions in shady pill mill operations accept an under the counter financial stipend from an operative who provides the physician with a supply of patients.
In the case of Vaughn, he let his medical license expire on Sept. 30, 2017, but he still showed up for his job as a doctor in the Potomac Prompt Medical Care in Potomac, Md., located off of Seven Locks Road. He was busted when investigators for the Maryland Physicians Board showed up on Nov. 1, 2017, and found Vaughn and a “physician extender” on the job. Vaughn allegedly admitted to the investigators that he knew his license had expired yet had provided medical care to four to five patients anyway on that date.
The Maryland Physicians Board reported that Vaughn also told the investigators that he had rendered medical care to about 20 patients on Oct. 30, 2017.
The patients recruited to work with drug dealers are then are allowed to keep a couple of pills and turn over the balance to the drug dealer. A recent operation busted by the FBI with a Philadelphia doctor involved an outlaw biker gang and dancers in a strip club. The dancers went to the doctor, obtained a prescription, and provided the pills to the bikers who sold the narcotics. The bikers paid off the doctor prior to their operation going up in the smoke of federal charges.
According to the 66-count indictment, between January 2014 and June 2017, Vaughn was a physician who practiced out of an urgent care center located in Potomac, Maryland. During this time, he prescribed four individuals 3,210 20 mg and 30 mg Amphetamine (Adderall) pills outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose.
Amphetamine is a stimulant and a Schedule II controlled substance. Amphetamine is commonly used for the treatment of attention deficit disorder and is available in generic form and under the brand name Adderall.
FBI Special Agent-in-Charge of the Baltimore Field Office Gordon B. Johnson said. “Vaughn violated his privilege and authority to prescribe controlled drugs lawfully by putting his own personal gain ahead of his patients’ health and well-being. When trusted doctors fail, the FBI and our partners are going to hold them accountable.”
Vaughn faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and up to a lifetime of supervised release.
Vaughn set up GoFundMe page after being indicted to fleece the naive
Vaughn set up a GoFundMe page to defraud donors into assisting him with what he called an involuntary eviction by his landlord. To date, Vaughn managed to pull in a few hundred dollars from generous but gullible souls.
“Loss of job due to clinic closure, no benefits, have to move by December 31(landlord wants to sell rather than rent.”
Dr. Vaughn blew his second chance
On or about September 20, 2005, the D.C. Board summarily suspended the medical license of Dr. William “Skip” Vaughn III for prescribing large amounts of CDS to a patient after terminating their physician-patient relationship and without documenting the CDS prescriptions in a medical record. Based on their investigative findings, the D.C. Board on May 16, 2006, revoked the Respondent’s medical license.
The D.C. Board terminated Vaughn’s probation retroactive to December 31, 2008.
Board records reflect the following:
“The Respondent allowed his D.C. license to expire in 2010. On August 27, 2008, the Maryland Board imposed reciprocal action based on the D.C. Board’s action and placed the Respondent on one year of probation.”
On April 7, 2010, the Maryland Board terminated the Respondent’s probation, thereby allowing him to once again practice in Maryland.
From 2010, until he was busted in 2017, the Maryland Board didn’t reveal how many prescriptions he wrote to waitresses and bartenders in Hooters or provided prescriptions to others when he failed to maintain medical records or give proper examinations.
Only The Shadow knows for sure.
- From 2010, until he was busted in 2017, the Maryland Board didn’t reveal how many prescriptions he wrote to waitresses and bartenders in Hooters or provided prescriptions to others when he failed to maintain medical records or give proper examinations.
