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A Norristown doctor who prosecutors say violated ethical standards has admitted to prescribing drugs, including oxycodone, to addicted female patients in exchange for nude photographs and other sexual favors.
Joseph Francis Cipriano, 57, whose practice was located at 905 DeKalb St., showed no emotion Tuesday as he pleaded guilty in Montgomery County Court to felony charges of corrupt organizations and unlawful prescribing of medications in connection with incidents that occurred between January 2013 and April 2018.
“This doctor violated the Hippocratic Oath. When you put a doctor in the community you want to rely on them and he just defiled that,” said Assistant District Attorney James E. Price II. “We’re in the middle of an epidemic in which people are seeking help for opioid addictions and this guy is profiting off of it in the most sexually depraved ways. That is just utterly unacceptable.”
Judge William R. Carpenter deferred sentencing until later this year and permitted Cipriano to remain free on $200,000 bail pending the sentencing hearing.
Cipriano, of the 1600 block of Williams Way, West Norriton, faces a possible maximum sentence of 32½-to-65-years in prison on the charges. However, state sentencing guidelines could allow for a lesser sentence.
Price vowed to seek a lengthy prison sentence against Cipriano.
Cipriano did not comment about the charges as he left the courtroom with an unidentified woman and his lawyer Timothy Woodward. Cipriano surrendered his medical license to authorities after he was arrested last year.
With the corrupt organization charge, prosecutors alleged Cipriano engaged in a pattern of racketeering, including charging Medicaid for several office visits for a patient who was at the time incarcerated and unable to make office visits.
Prosecutors alleged Cipriano prescribed “tens of thousands” of opioid pills to women during the five-year period. Cipriano, who practiced medicine since 1991, was licensed to prescribe medications to treat drug addicted patients.
Prosecutors accused Cipriano of prescribing drugs that are often abused including oxycodone, Adderall, benzodiazepines and promethazine cough syrup. Patients detailed how they would contact Cipriano through various social media platforms to request drugs and that he would either issue the prescriptions electronically or leave them in a mailbox, according to court documents.
“These were addicts and he knew it and he took advantage of them,” Price alleged.
When he was questioned by detectives, Cipriano admitted to fulfilling a female patient’s drug dependence “in exchange for his own sexual needs” and engaging in an inappropriate relationship with another female patient “that is of a sexual nature,” detectives alleged in the arrest affidavit.
Detectives alleged Cipriano’s own words during questioning made clear his motive for the improper relationships with young female patients.
“Is it safe to say that you were fulfilling (one woman’s) drug dependency in exchange for your sexual needs?” detectives asked Cipriano, according to court documents.
“That was never the intent but unfortunately, that is what occurred,” Cipriano allegedly told detectives.
The inappropriate contact included “kissing and groping” and other sexual activities, detectives alleged.
“This investigation has unearthed patterns of dispensing controlled substances in bad faith, outside the scope of the normal and accepted patient/doctor relationship and outside the treatment principles accepted by a reasonable segment of the medical profession,” detectives alleged in the criminal complaint.
“Detectives also uncovered Doctor Joseph Cipriano’s manipulation of young female patients to fulfill their drug dependency through the exchange of sexually explicit images/videos in exchange for the issuance of prescriptions. We also learned of more than one physical sexual relationship for this same purpose,” detectives alleged.