Agents arrest Lake Elsinore doctor over fatal overdose

State narcotics agents arrested a doctor at his Lake Elsinore hotel room Tuesday for illegally writing numerous painkiller prescriptions that led to the death of a 28-year-old man in November, the California attorney general’s office said.

Dr. Wesley Albert, 78, is being held for investigation of second-degree murder in the overdose of Jason Morgan of Riverside, who had 30 bottles of narcotics prescribed by Albert when he died, officials said. Morgan died, they said, after Albert gave him a large prescription for Soma, a muscle relaxant prescribed for acute pain.

“Prescription drugs are extremely potent, even lethal,” state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said in a statement. “The California Department of Justice will crack down on crooked doctors who sell dangerous narcotics to people without a legitimate medical condition.”

The arrest followed a 10-month investigation by the San Diego County pharmaceutical task force run by the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.

After a patient was arrested in Encinitas in April 2007 for possessing controlled prescription drugs, undercover agents found that Albert was selling hundreds of prescriptions for drugs such as Vicodin, Oxycontin, Xanax and Soma at the Lake Elsinore Hotel & Casino, officials said.

He routinely prescribed several times the normal quantity of the drugs, they said, and got $50 to $100 per prescription.

Task force Cmdr. Ernie Limon said people learned that Albert would prescribe drugs for cash, and residents in Riverside, Orange and San Diego counties flocked to the hotel where the doctor had been living for months.

Some patients went directly to Albert’s room, Limon said. But others met the doctor at the casino -- where he hung out, gambled and dined -- then they walked back to his room to get prescriptions.

“He did not give them an examination and did not ask the normal questions a doctor would ask about symptoms,” the investigator said.

Agents searching his room found a box of prescription forms under his bed, Limon said. And Albert told agents he recently gave up his medical offices in Riverside.

Staffers at his former medical office in Los Angeles said Albert had retired. The California Medical Board website indicates that Albert’s license lapsed last month.

“The bottom line is that 99% of doctors . . . are providing patients with appropriate medications,” Limon said. “Unfortunately, we have some doctors who . . . use their license to make cash profits -- and, in this case, contribute to the death of Jason Morgan.”

He said the cause of Morgan’s death was heart failure and Soma intoxication. Morgan had five times the recommended amount of the drug in his system.

The doctor was booked into Riverside County Jail. His arraignment is scheduled Friday.

A spokesman for the law office that represented Albert in a 2005 bankruptcy filing declined to comment, saying they had no information.

Prince Carter, who works at the hotel’s front desk, said the doctor was allowed to live at the hotel, where rent is about $650 to $850 a month for one bedroom, because he played cards daily. “He paid his rent on time,” Carter said.

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tim.reiterman@latimes.com