The sentencing scheduled for Tuesday in Cleveland federal court for Martin Escobar, 58, of Boardman, who formerly ran a Lake Milton medical practice, has been reset for 10 a.m. July 27.

Escobar pleaded guilty in January to illegally distributing controlled substances, causing the deaths of two patients, unlawfully distributing a controlled substance to a person under the age of 21 and health care fraud.

Escobar’s attorney, Jerry Ingram, requested additional time, citing the recent release of a presentence report of Escobar’s background by the federal pretrial / probation department. Ingram’s filing cited the need for more time to carry out medical, factual and legal analysis.

Between March 2015 and October 2019, Escobar admitted to prescribing controlled substances out of his Lake Milton medical office, including opioids such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, often in combination with benzodiazepines and stimulants, all outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

His practice was called the Lake Shore Medical Center. Escobar’s license to practice medicine and surgery was suspended indefinitely last July.

Escobar admitted that, in order to support his unlawful prescription practices, he used false diagnoses, falsified patient pain intensity scales in medical charts, increased dosages of controlled substances and prescribed them for prolonged periods without evidence of efficacy. Furthermore, Escobar admitted to inadequately investigating patient pain complaints, failing to pursue treatment options other than controlled substances and falsely claiming to have performed extensive physical examinations on his patients, according to documents.

Escobar also admitted to ignoring warning signs of his patients’ drug addiction and abuse. This included ignoring the results of his patients’ urine drug screen tests, many of which were performed in Escobar’s medical office and later billed to the government. These tests suggested that patients were abusing the drugs that Escobar had prescribed, using other controlled substances and selling their prescription drugs on the illegal secondary market. As a result, Escobar pleaded guilty to health care fraud.

Escobar also admitted that, in July of 2015 and 2016, he unlawfully prescribed opioids and other controlled substances to two patients without a legitimate medical purpose. Both patients later fatally overdosed from the drugs. In another instance, in April 2018, Escobar admitted that he unlawfully prescribed opioids to an individual under the age of 21 without a medical need, the documents state.