Former LV doctor gets four years in prison

Kim Smith

Wednesday, Aug. 25, 1999 | 11:16 a.m.

A former Las Vegas doctor was sentenced to more than four years in prison Tuesday for selling $1.5 million worth of drugs to patients who didn't need them.

U.S. District Judge Philip Pro sentenced Luisito Evangelista, 69, to 51 months in prison, said Howard Zlotnick, First Assistant U.S. Attorney.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Evangelista was a licensed physician in Nevada and Illinois, but he lost his Nevada license in September 1997 for prescribing drugs to patients who didn't need them.

Less than two years later, in February 1999, Evangelista was indicted on drug trafficking charges. At the time, U.S. Attorney Kathryn Landreth said "This case has opened the door into an underground network of people who literally make tens of millions of dollars illegally trafficking in dangerous and prescription drugs."

Evangelista entered a plea agreement in May, at which time he told Pro that he used his Illinois medical license to buy more than 500,000 tablets from a Chicago pharmaceutical company. One of the drugs he purchased, Hydrocodone, is synthetic codeine.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Gaber said Evangelista bought 20 times more drugs in a two-year period than a legitimate doctor would need.

Evangelista also agreed to forfeit $1.5 million and his house to the federal government.

Evangelista has been in trouble before. In 1996, he was charged with devising a scheme to defraud five insurance companies through a series of staged accidents.

The doctor confessed that he would supply his co-defendant, attorney Norman J. Reed, with falsified medical documents in order to bilk insurance companies.

Evangelista agreed to testify against Reed, make restitution and perform 100 hours of community service in exchange for the charges being dismissed.