'Candy Man' gets 8 years in prison

Dr. Warren R. Stack said Tuesday he was sorry. He was sorry for everything that has happened.

"These are not just words. I feel real remorse and I feel it deeply," he told U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell from a podium in the courthouse. "I want to redeem myself and correct the mistakes that I have made."

Campbell sentenced Stack to serve eight years in a federal prison and will later determine the amount of restitution he will pay.

"It's a fair punishment given the extreme sentence he was facing," Stack's lawyer, Ron Yengich, said afterward.

Stack originally faced 18 counts, including conspiracy, dispensing drugs outside of the bounds of medical practice, unlawful distribution of a controlled substance and health care fraud, for which he could have been sentenced to life in prison. Stack has been blamed for the overdose deaths of five of his patients, but he denied blame for those deaths.

"I've always disagreed that he caused anyone's death," Yengich said.

In May, Stack entered a plea deal with federal prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and a pair of health-care fraud charges, which carried an eight-year prison sentence. Prosecutors dropped the other 15 charges against him and Campbell dismissed them in court on Tuesday.

Stack was known to many of his patients as "the Candy Man" for the unreserved way he doled out painkillers, his indictment states.

Patients — up to 80 in a day — paid $70 to $200 to sit across from him at a makeshift desk in his waiting room. Minutes later, they left with a prescription for narcotics including OxyContin, oxycodone, methadone and Percocet, according to the indictment.

His two assistants, Mindy L. Kramer and Phyllis V. Murray, billed health insurance plans for medical exams that never took place. Kramer and Murray pleaded guilty last year to one charge of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. Their sentencing hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.

In a written letter to the court, Stack asked for mercy toward his assistants, saying that he alone shoulders the weight of guilt.

Campbell told Stack to report to prison by noon on Sept. 22.

"Do not, do not go missing, OK?" she said.

Stack left the courthouse from the side entrance and jumped into a waiting car without giving a comment.

e-mail: mgonda@desnews.com