Doctor intends to plead guilty after new plea deal

Derrick James, McAlester News-Capital, Okla.
·3 min read
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Jan. 18—A local doctor indicted federally with prescribing a controlled substance for personal use intends to plead guilty to the charge.

Investigators claim Dr. Nelson Onaro wrote a prescription for 60 pills of Adderall to a staff member "with the understanding" that the staff member would fill the prescription and "bring the prescribed pills back to him for his personal use."

Onaro, who owned and operated the Medical Clinic of McAlester on East Delaware Ave., said in court documents he intends to plead guilty to a single federal indictment of distribution of controlled substance.

The doctor was originally indicted in 2020 on 24 counts of unlawful distribution and dispensing of controlled dangerous substances before federal prosecutors agreed to dismiss 18 of the indictments as part of a plea deal.

The original indictments accused him of distributing more than 60 kilograms of fentanyl, oxycodone, morphine, oxymorphone, and Adderall "outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate purpose" between January 2018 and May 2019.

"The change of plea deal is based on plea negotiations with the U.S. Attorney and Department of Justice," Onaro's intent to plead guilty states. "Defendant is only pleading to count six of the information as the U.S. is withdrawing counts 1-5."

The document states a signed copy of the new plea deal was being transmitted to prosecutors and was not immediately available to the public.

In the original plea deal made in 2021 in exchange for a guilty plea on all six charges, Onaro agreed to surrender his Drug Enforcement Administration Certificate of Registration and to surrender and abandon his license to practice as a medical doctor in Oklahoma and any other states and agreed to not seek a new license.

Onaro withdrew his original guilty plea after defense attorneys claimed Onaro now had an "affirmative defense" after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Ruan v. United States.

U.S. District Judge Ronald A. White granted the request in July 2022 for Onaro's request to withdraw his guilty plea in five of the six counts.

Onaro's attorney argued the doctor would have never pleaded guilty to the charges if he had been able to sit in front of a jury and explain "regardless of some random California-based physicians' opinion" that he "genuinely thought he was treating his patients alleged pain by and through his training."

"They told him they were in pain; Dr. Onaro then prescribed pain relieving medicine," his attorneys wrote. "Dr. Onaro did nothing but act as a doctor."

Federal prosecutors did not object to the change of plea in five of the six counts and asked the judge to grant the motion.

"Unlike counts one through five, in count six the defendant directly admitted that he presented a prescription to an individual 'with the understanding that C.L. would fill the prescription and bring the prescribed pills back to him for his personal use," the government wrote in a court document.

As part of the new plea deal "the government agrees to be recommend a sentence within the properly calculated guideline range" and that Onaro "is free to request any sentence from the court."

A sentencing hearing is yet to be scheduled in the case.