Bloomingdale doctor receives 2-year prison sentence in opioid fraud case

A Bloomingdale doctor, who had previously surrendered his federal license to dispense narcotics, was sentenced to two years in prison for illegally prescribing opioids.

Federal prosecutors said Stanley Davis Demorest, 67, issued prescriptions for opioids using another doctor’s name and federal identification number to patients who did not have a medical need for the drugs.

Demorest pleaded guilty earlier this year to health care fraud and unlawfully using another person’s (federal) registration number to dispense controlled substances.

Prosecutors said Demorest and a fellow doctor, Nicholas Recchia, 64, of River Grove, colluded to prescribe opioids to patients unnecessarily, causing Medicare and Medicaid to pay for the fraudulent prescriptions.

Recchia was sentenced to six months in prison for his role in the scheme that ran from 2015 through 2020, prosecutors said.