Doctor faces charges over online prescriptions
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Torino Jennings, a Virginia doctor, never met or examined any of the thousands of people he issued muscle relaxant prescriptions to over the Internet, and he shortchanged the Internal Revenue Service by not reporting the total amount of income he made on the lucrative side job, according to federal authorities who issued an 11-count indictment against him.
Jennings, a staff physician at Retreat Doctors' Hospital in Richmond, is accused of issuing 50,000 to 100,000 prescriptions for the relaxant Soma and other drugs between 2004 and 2007, and authorities say he was compensated between $5 and $7 for each prescription he wrote on behalf of an online pharmacy. Seven counts of the federal indictment, filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, allege illegal issuance of prescriptions; the others relate to tax fraud.
The indictment was carried out in Boston because electronic tax filings, the type made by Jennings, are handled in Andover. According to court documents, Jennings underreported his income by hundreds of thousands of dollars. The largest discrepancy was in 2005, according to court records.
Authorities say Jennings may have issued up to 100,000 illegal prescriptions, but the case against him hinges on one person, who allegedly received Soma from the doctor. That person is identified only by the initials E.D.
BRIAN BALLOU
