Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 | 6:20 p.m.
A Las Vegas doctor has been arrested on multiple felony counts involving suspicions he obtained controlled substances by fraudulently writing prescriptions for those drugs.
Records showed Monday that Dr. James Robert Eells was arrested Thursday at his office by a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department narcotics officer, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent and an investigator for the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners.
He was arrested at his office in the MountainView Hospital campus on North Tenaya Way, a police report shows.
Eells was released on his own recognizance after being booked on 36 counts of burglary, 41 counts of acquiring and obtaining a controlled substance by fraud and 41 counts of unlawfully prescribing and dispensing a controlled substance.
The burglary counts don’t relate to any break-ins, as burglaries are commonly thought of, but rather relate to Eells being accused of entering a pharmacy with the intent to commit a crime, technically a "burglary" under Nevada law, said his attorney in the criminal case, Greg Knapp.
Knapp said the doctor will contest whatever charges may be formally filed by prosecutors.
"He vigorously denies the charges," Knapp said.
Jacob Hafter, an attorney who is representing Eells in proceedings involving the Board of Medical Examiners, said the charges Eells was arrested on were "fabricated" and involved a marital problem.
An arrest report says that Eells was recently separated from his wife and a key witness against Eells is his wife’s brother (Eells' brother-in-law).
Because of a Board of Medical Examiners proceeding at least temporarily halting Eells’ practice, Hafter said Monday, "Hundreds of patients have lost access to a good and caring provider."
A Metro Police arrest report says an investigation showed that Eells, 51, had written at least 41 prescriptions for his brother-in-law between January 2010 and June 2011 — and then picked up the prescriptions himself, telling a pharmacist his brother-in-law was out of the country and that Eells would be mailing the drugs to him.
This information was false as the brother-in-law told police he had not been one of Eells' patients, the report says.
When confronted, Eells told investigators he had "fraudulently written the prescriptions in (his brother-in-law’s) name and filled them with the intent to help indigent patients," the arrest report said.
Much of the report, however, shows investigators were looking into suspicions that Eells was obtaining the fraudulently obtained medications for his own use.
The brother-in-law, a key witness who initiated the probe with a complaint to the Board of Medical Examiners, told investigators "He suspected Dr. Eells had gone into remission and was again abusing pharmaceutical products," the report says.
The report also details past treatment Eells has received for substance abuse.
In the most recent investigation, investigators said in their report that the medications he wrote in his brother-in-law’s name, and then personally picked up at a pharmacy near MountainView Hospital, included the narcotic painkiller oxycodone, the stimulant methylin, painkiller carisoprodol and anxiety medication alprazolam (Xanax).
Eells is one of MountainView’s affiliated physicians and specializes in internal medicine, according to the hospital’s website.
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