FOX 2 - A Grosse Pointe Woods doctor was convicted by a federal jury Wednesday on charges he sold controlled substance prescriptions and tax crimes.
The backstory:
Peter Nwoke was convicted in Detroit federal court yesterday, announced the US Attorney's Office Eastern District of Michigan.
The case against Nwoke, 50, arose from allegations surrounding his medical practice, Divine Medical Care and Divine Medical Services, which served homebound patients in Detroit.
Nwoke illegally sold controlled substance prescriptions for opioids, charging $500 a prescription for Oxycontin 80mg or oxycodone 30mg.
The prescriptions were then filled by the purchasers and sold on the street. When he deposited some of the cash he received from pill sales in 20 different bank accounts, he failed to declare it as income or pay taxes on it.
In order to avoid paying taxes, Nwoke also incorporated two additional corporations, City Medical and Divine Medical Center, which he placed in the names of nominees.
Nwoke never declared or paid taxes on income received from corporations he controlled but registered in the names of other people.
According to evidence presented at trial, Nwoke underreported his taxable income for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013 by a total of more than $2 million.
Nwoke underreported his tax due and owing for those years by more than $725,000. He paid taxes totaling $29,424 when he should have paid $849,088 in taxes. In one tax year he paid $500 in taxes on income of over $400,000.
During the tax years in question, Nwoke prescribed over 2.8 million dosage units of prescription drug-controlled substances. He deposited over $1.4 million in cash in his collection of bank accounts.
According to the US Attorney's Office, after one of his contacts in the pill business was raided by the FBI, said Nwoke told him "They’ll never get me, because I keep my paperwork together."
Nwoke is scheduled to be sentenced on September 10, 2026. His sentence will be determined after consideration of the guidelines.
The defendant has pending against him three counts of false statement/perjury, based on his testimony at an earlier trial on the tax charges.
That trial in 2022 ended in a mistrial, since that jury was unable to agree on a verdict.
The perjury charges were severed from the tax charges and will be scheduled for trial at a later date.
The US Attorney's Office said Nwoke is presumed innocent of these charges unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Source: Information for this report is from the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan.