Leader in oxycodone prescription fraud sentenced to 4 years

PORTLAND — A man who fraudulently obtained and sold 2,400 oxycodone pills by having others pass fake prescriptions at Portland-area pharmacies was sentenced Tuesday to four years in federal prison.

Chase Adam Conway, 36, sent women into pharmacies to fill the bogus prescriptions, obtaining 90 to 180 pills at a time, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration tracked Conway’s car in 2018, and found he had been using doctors’ DEA registration numbers without their knowledge, according to Kemp Strickland, an assistant U.S. attorney.

Conway also obtained medical prescription paper, used his printer to fraudulently place the doctors’ names and their DEA registration numbers on the prescriptions, and provided his “runners,” with bogus IDs to obtain the pills.

Conway’s lawyer Robert Hamilton, an assistant federal public defender, said his client’s crime was driven by a long-term addiction to opiates and methamphetamine.

His arrest in this case has “probably saved his life and others too and he recognizes that,” Hamilton said.

“In my mind, I thought I was helping out friends that were involved. I could give them free pills. They’re not going to have to rob people, not going to have to sell their bodies,” Conway said he thought.

Once Conway was sober, he said he realized that “all I was doing I was enabling their addiction. I’m genuinely sorry for that.”