Staff report

An internal medicine osteopathic physician who practiced in Niles until early 2022 was sentenced to a total 72 months in a federal prison for a drug case, in which he prescribed unnecessary medicine to a patient.

Dr. Jeffrey Sutton, 65, was sentenced Wednesday by Judge Christopher A. Boyko in U.S. Northern Ohio District Court. Earlier this year, the doctor pleaded guilty to 41 counts of illegally prescribing patients opioids and other controlled substances, one count of illegally distributing controlled substances, and 20 counts of health care fraud.

Sutton was also fined $20,000, assessed a special court cost of $5,200 and ordered to pay $148,870 in restitution. The judge gave Sutton permission to self-report to the authority of the U.S. marshals to begin serving his prison term. After release, Sutton would face up to three years of parole supervision.

According to court documents, from January 2015 through January 2022, Sutton knowingly prescribed medically unnecessary controlled substances to patients outside of the usual course of his practice and without a legitimate medical reason. In doing so, court documents state Sutton caused health care benefit programs to be fraudulently billed for both office visits and the prescriptions.

In other charges, Sutton also pleaded guilty to engaging in sexual acts with patients to whom he directly prescribed controlled substances, including during office visits. He also admitted to delivering dozens of oxycodone pills to the home of a patient with whom he had a sexual relationship.

Sutton headed the former Internal and Physical Medicine Clinic at 1250 Youngstown Warren Road. The clinic in Niles closed in January 2022 following an FBI search there.

Court records show Sutton escalated opioid dosages to some patients at extreme levels, sometimes increasing the dosage by more than 1,000 percent and sometimes prescribing more than 22 times the level of opioids that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified as posing a risk of overdose.

In some instances, prosecutors accused Sutton of combining opioids with other medications such as benzodiazapines, a combination that has been known to cause serious risks of slowed or difficult breathing, coma and death.

Sutton also ignored documented behaviors that indicated patients were abusing or diverting prescribed controlled substances or abusing nonprescribed controlled substances such as cocaine and fentanyl.

In a presentence memo filed with the court, Sutton’s attorney, Michael McGee of Warren, argued that his client’s sentence should have been between 15 and 21 months, saying the doctor was a valuable member of the community, pointing to his past experience as a Scout leader and the fact that he has given up his medical practice, discharged his patients to other physicians and surrendered his medical license.

The government had asked, and received from the judge, permission to seal its sentencing memo because of the sensitivity of the subject and out of concern for the privacy of Sutton’s victims.

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