Dr. Naga Raja Thota is a pain specialist with an office in El Cajon.
An Indian American physician in California, Dr. Naga Raja Thota, 62, who is a pain specialist with an office in El Cajon, was arrested and charged with distributing oxycodone and other highly addictive drugs without any legitimate medical purpose in exchange for sex acts.
The doctor was taken into custody by San Diego Drug Enforcement Administration agents at his practice, on August 31, according to the Justice Department. NBC News reported his practice is Pain Management Center, located at 2732 Navajo Rd. in El Cajon.
The complaint said at least two young women received prescriptions for opioids without a legitimate medical purpose on numerous occasions in exchange for sex acts. The complaint also shows a pattern in which sexually-explicit texts are exchanged by the doctor and the women, followed by prescriptions written for them by Thota.
According to the complaint, one victim said she met Thota when she was hospitalized for withdrawal symptoms for hydrocodone and alprazolam. Thota agreed to treat her but documented that his treatment was for pain even though this victim did not suffer from any medical condition that caused chronic or ongoing pain. This victim also stated that Thota kept increasing the dosage.
“Doctors who exploit patients are the worst kind of predators.” said DEA San Diego Special Agent in
Charge William Sherman, in a statement. “DEA recognizes the trust the citizens of San Diego place in their doctors. We will continue to ensure that physicians who are abusing that trust by bartering sex for prescriptions will be arrested and prosecuted.”
The victim, who was 20 years old when she met Thota, said she felt that if she did not submit to sexual acts with Thota he would not have provided her with additional opioid prescriptions. After being exposed to greater dosage levels of opioids by Thota, the young woman started using an even stronger opioid – heroin, according to the Justice Department.
NBC 7 spoke with Tom Lenox of the DEA Wednesday who said the federal investigation on Thota dates back several years.
Lenox said it involves three patients in their early to mid-20s who were prescribed painkillers by the doctor and developed sexual relationships with him.
The complaint shows the doctor engaged in a pattern of sending “sexually-explicit texts” with a woman identified only as J.S., followed by writing prescriptions for the highly-addictive painkillers. He often called the patient “babe” and “love” in the text messages.
The complaint says J.S. told investigators that her romantic relationship with Thota began three days after her first consultation with him, when he called her cell phone to ask if she had a date for Valentine’s Day. After that, they began communicating regularly via phone calls and text messages.
Later on in their relationship, according to the complaint, J.S. asked Thota to write a prescription for painkillers for her brother and Thota sent the woman a text message saying no because he was “scared” to lose his license to practice medicine.
However, without ever establishing a patient-doctor relationship with J.S.’s brother, Thota wound up writing prescriptions for the woman’s brother three times in 2013, the complaint states.
Thota was arraigned in federal court Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernie Skomal. He is being represented by San Diego-based attorney Robert Schlein, who has been his attorney for the past two years.
The judge set Thota’s bail at $100,000. The doctor was also ordered to not contact any of the patients involved in the case.
The doctor is charged with seven counts of dispensing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose. If convicted on all charges, Thota faces a maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars, plus a $1 million fine and life-term of supervised release.