CASPER, Wyo. — A former Casper physician was again sentenced to 25 years in federal prison on Friday after his second conviction in the same drug distribution, firearms possession and money laundering case, the U.S. Justice Department said in a release on Friday.
The scheme resulted in at least one overdose death, according to the federal complaint.
The Drug Enforcement Agency said in the criminal complaint that Dr. Shakeel Kahn, 57, fed a nationwide drug distribution network by writing opioid prescriptions for cash from his purported pain management clinics, including one in Casper, where he was arrested.
Kahn was tried at a federal courthouse in Casper and found guilty in 2019. The conviction was ultimately overturned by an appellate court over a jury instruction regarding the elements of a physician’s criminal liability under the Controlled Substances Act.
A federal jury again convicted Kahn on Dec. 15, 2024, following a six-week trial before U.S. District Court Judge Alan B. Johnson in Casper.
Kahn originally operated in Arizona, where the DEA investigation began in 2016, according to the federal complaint. After a complaint from the Wyoming Board of Medicine, the DEA found that Kahn had opened a practice in Casper in 2015 after pharmacies in Arizona started refusing to fill his prescriptions, according to the complaint.
Kahn operated from an office with no signage on the 300 block of Fenway.
Trial evidence showed that patients from Massachusetts, Kentucky and Arizona would regularly fly to Casper to fill prescriptions, sometimes filling identical scripts in two states.
The government said Kahn eventually began having patients sign documents proclaiming that they were not addicts, that Kahn was not a “drug dealer” and that the patients could be liable for up $100,000 if criminal actions emerged against Kahn. They also signed documents promising they wouldn’t wear a wire in his office.
Kahn was also convicted of accepting firearms in lieu of cash in certain instances.
Medical experts testified that Kahn acted beyond reasonable medical practices by prescribing dangerous combinations of drugs without consultations or counseling, and that he falsified documentation of office visits.
“The patients who received the medications often had no visible source of income that would allow them to afford the prescriptions — other than what they were earning re-selling the drugs on the street,” the Justice Department said, adding that Kahn targeted vulnerable addicts.
Kahn’s wife and brother were also convicted in the conspiracy.
