Doctor is convicted of illegally prescribing narcotics after examining dog X-ray; faces 13 years in jail

A Rancho Palos Verdes physician was convicted Tuesday of writing prescriptions for powerful painkillers and muscle relaxants to undercover operatives without conducting a physical exam or completing medical charts.

In one case, the physician signed off on prescriptions to a patient who showed him an X-ray of a dog that included the animal’s tail, authorities said.

A downtown Los Angeles jury deliberated for about two hours before finding Dr. Richard Seongjun Kim guilty of 17 felony counts of illegally prescribing drugs without a legitimate medical need, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Kim, 44, who had been free on $100,000 bail during his trial, was immediately taken into custody after the verdict was read. He faces up to 13 years and 4 months in prison at his sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 30.

Defense attorney Steve Meister said he was disappointed by the verdict and planned to argue to keep Kim out of jail.

“My client has always been a caring and competent physician,” Meister said. “While the jury may have concluded that he unlawfully prescribed, custody in this case would be wholly unreasonable.”

The case against the general practitioner was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, whose operatives posed as patients at Kim’s Western Avenue clinic over the course of three months in 2014.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Emily Street, the prosecutor who handled the case, said that Kim asked patients to bring in previous charts and X-rays to the sham medical exams.

“He wanted a lot of records — not because he was interested in patients’ ailments, but he wanted to cover himself,” Street said.

His office had no staff and he typically exchanged text messages with patients to arrange appointments. He didn’t accept insurance — only cash or credit cards, the prosecutor said.

“He would open up his office and lock the door behind him, and meet with the patient in his office,” Street said.

Without examining patients or writing out medical charts, he issued prescriptions for Norco, Xanax, Adderall and Soma, prosecutors said. During appointments, Kim sat behind a desk and engaged in mostly small talk, Deputy Dist. Atty. John Niedermann said in an earlier interview with The Times.

The undercover appointments were recorded by hidden cameras, and the video footage was shown to jurors.

“It was all on video, which was really the crux of the case,” Street said. “There was no exam whatsoever — no vitals, very little history, if any, taken. It was not much of anything resembling the practice of medicine.”

An undercover informant once brought in a chest X-ray from a dog, and the doctor examined it before writing prescriptions for hydrocodone and tramadol, along with Soma, a muscle relaxant, prosecutors said.

Kim was arrested July 1, 2015, outside his clinic. He was initially charged with 21 felonies, but prosecutors dropped four counts before trial.

A canine X-ray was used in at least one previous undercover sting at a physician’s office. In 2012, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy posing as a patient presented a Glendora doctor an X-ray of a German shepherd to accompany her tale of an injured back and neck.

The X-ray had the dog’s name, Recon, and the name of an animal hospital, but Dr. Rolando Lodevico Atiga wrote a prescription for a narcotic painkiller and a muscle relaxant, officials said. The doctor was later charged with multiple counts of unlawful prescription of a controlled substance. The status of his case is unclear.

Times staff writer Hailey Branson-Potts contributed to this report.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno.

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