McAlester doctor sentenced to probation
Aug. 22—MUSKOGEE — A McAlester doctor federally indicted with prescribing a controlled substance for personal use said he "made a mistake" prior to being sentenced to one-year of probation.
Dr. Nelson Onaro, who owned and operated the Medical Clinic of McAlester on East Delaware Avenue, pleaded guilty in February to one count of unlawful distribution of a controlled substance.
Onaro, 71, was charged in the Eastern District of Oklahoma in 2020 after investigators said he 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."
The doctor appeared Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Muskogee with his attorney, Tulsa-based lawyer Zachary Enlow.
As part of the plea deal, Onaro agreed to surrender his Drug Enforcement Administration certificate of registration and to not "oppose revocation of his registration to dispense controlled substances."
The plea deal states Onaro also agreed to surrender and abandon any and all licenses he has to practice as a medical doctor and to refrain from applying and seeking reinstatement of any licenses issued to practice medicine in the United States.
Enlow told U.S. District Judge Ronald A. White his client immigrated to the U.S. as a doctor and was successful "up until filing" of the indictment with no malpractice claims ever filed against him.
"He can never prescribe another pill," Enlow said. "The public is protected."
Prior to receiving his sentence, Onaro told White he came from a family "devoid of a criminal record."
"This is embarrassing to me," Onaro said. "I made a mistake."
White sentenced Onaro to one-year supervised probation with no fines due to Onaro's current financial status. Onaro was also ordered to attend and complete an approved drug treatment program along with submitting to drug testing and a search of his residence for any contraband.
The doctor was originally indicted in 2020 following a December 2019 search warrant conducted at his office for an alleged 24 counts of unlawful distribution and dispensing of controlled dangerous substances.
Federal prosecutors later agreed to dismiss 18 of the indictments as part of a 2021 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.
Onaro originally agreed to plead guilty to six counts of unlawful distribution and dispensing of controlled dangerous substances before withdrawing his guilty plea following the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Ruan v. United States.
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," Enlow wrote. "Dr. Onaro did nothing but act as a doctor."
