Third man arrested on drug charges
Published 12:00 am Monday, June 24, 2002
A third person indicted late last week on federal drug charges was arrested Sunday evening in Kitts Hill.
David Marcum of the Lawrence Drug Task Force said Donald Sherman, 40, of Ironton, was arrested without incident at a home on Dog Fork Road that he was fixing up and apparently planning to move into.
In addition to the Lawrence Drug Task Force, The Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office and Coal Grove Police Department assisted in the arrest.
Sherman was taken to the Lawrence County Jail and then was expected to be transported to Cincinnati for arraignment before a U.S. magistrate.
Ironton physician Randall L. McCollister and Lawrence Jenkins were arrested Friday by Robert
Burnham, Special Agent for the FBI, along with Lawrence County Sheriff Tim Sexton, Ironton Police Chief William Garland and Detective Capt. Chris Bowman, Lawrence County Prosecutor J.B. Collier, Jr., Jackson County Sheriff John Shasteen, and officials with The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations and Identification, The Ohio Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections.
All three men were indicted on a number of charges, stemming from the alleged illegal distribution of
controlled substances, including OxyContin.
Tracey Heinlein, spokeswoman for the Cincinnati office of the FBI, said McCollister allegedly "wrote prescriptions for oxycontin to Jenkins and Sherman, often using the names of former or current patients who owed his office money, and also used the names of deceased or non existent patients."
Jenkins and Sherman would then allegedly "take those prescriptions, have them filled and give the pills to other people," Heinlein said.
Jenkins is accused of using Medicaid cards to pay for the prescriptions, Heinlein said. He used these medical cards without the permission of the card holders.
The investigation that led to the arrests spanned more than a year and involved a number of state, local and federal agencies.
In addition to those agencies previously mentioned, The Ohio State Medical Board,
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Diversion Unit also assisted in the investigation. Teresa Moore/The Ironton Tribune