An Arlington doctor who flooded NoVA with “over a million oxycodone pills” has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, ordered to forfeit $750,000, and pay $50,000 in a first-of-its-kind restitution, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema sentenced Kirsten Van Steenberg Ball, 69, on Wednesday. A federal jury convicted her on one count of conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and 19 counts of distribution of oxycodone in December 2023.
The restitution the judge ordered, according to the prosecutor’s office, will go to “two separate Virginia state entities, including the department tasked with receiving federal funds for substance abuse programs in the state.”
Court records indicate that the doctor enabled her office manager to recruit people to become pain patients, and she then prescribed them large quantities of the drug and they sold the drugs over a 10-year period.
Three of her patients died of overdoses from the addictive opioid.
Ball falsified records while under investigation by the Virginia Department of Health Professions in 2014, 2015, and 2021. She then prescribed oxycodone to an undercover FBI agent who posed as a relative of an existing patient.
Prosecutors considered Ball’s office manager, Candie Marie Calix, 42, of Front Royal, to be a ringleader of the oxycodone distribution network. In 2022, she received seven years in prison for conspiring to distribute oxycodone.
Feature image, stock.adobe.com
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