Stanton M.D. Charged in Drug Selling Case

Criminal charges were filed against a Stanton physician on Wednesday, alleging that his medical practice was little more than a front for selling prescription drugs to addicts, including a mother and daughter who overdosed within two days of each other.

The Orange County district attorney’s office charged Dr. Lowell Orgill Kirk, 59, with 14 felony counts of illegally selling sedatives and pain relievers although the buyers were not under his care nor required medication for any health problem.

Four charges relate to Susan Gunn and her mother, Elsie, both of Garden Grove, who overdosed in April, 1989, on a variety of drugs, including codeine, morphine and Valium, some of which were allegedly purchased from Kirk.

Coroner’s reports show that Elsie Gunn, 60, died April 24, 1989, from massive internal bleeding caused by the combined effects of at least 10 drugs in her system. Authorities said Susan Gunn, 34, overdosed the next day on six different prescription drugs but recovered in the hospital.

“We believe he is no different than any drug dealer on the street,” said Special Agent Andy Alonso of the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement in Santa Ana, which investigated the case. “Maybe he’s even more dangerous by selling pure drugs that are very addictive and harder to kick.”

In connection with the Kirk case, prosecutors said they are also preparing charges against John Movsesian, 58, a pharmacist who shut down his operation last year at Kirk’s Crescent Medical Group on Western Avenue. Movsesian, who could not be reached for comment, could face misdemeanor counts of illegally supplying prescription drugs to Kirk’s patients.

Although Elsie Gunn obtained her drugs from Kirk, prosecutors declined to file a manslaughter charge against the doctor because it could not be shown that he gave Gunn the lethal dose.

“There was a causation problem,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Connie Ferris Johnson, the prosecutor. “The drugs she took were linked to him, but you have an independent party other than Kirk administering them.”

The doctor is scheduled to surrender Friday in Municipal Court in Westminster. If convicted, he would face a maximum penalty of three years in prison on each count of illegally supplying prescription drugs.

Kirk, who has been practicing medicine in Orange County for 30 years, could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But in earlier interviews with The Times, he repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, although he acknowledged that he has made some “mistakes” in prescribing drugs to certain patients.

Frederick L. McBride, Kirk’s attorney, declined to comment Wednesday.

The Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement began an undercover investigation of Kirk in July, 1988, when an Orange County Sheriff’s Department informant told agents that prescription drugs could be easily obtained at the doctor’s office.

Subsequently, undercover operatives and state agents said, they made repeated purchases of sedatives, sleeping pills, depressants and painkillers from Kirk without proper medical examinations nor the health problems that would require the drugs they bought.

Investigators also said they found evidence showing that Kirk improperly prescribed diuretics, which increase the flow of urine, to a 30-year-old anorexic woman. Physicians say diuretics can cause even further weight loss in anorexic people and endanger their health.

“He’s been doing this for a very long time,” said state Special Agent Spring Robbins, who is assigned to the case. The California Medical Board, formerly called the state Board of Medical Quality Assurance, “has had numerous complaints about him over a period of years,” Robbins said.

The case is the first time, however, that Kirk has been charged with a crime after 11 years of inquiries by state and federal authorities into allegations of insurance fraud and illegally prescribing controlled substances.

State narcotics agents said Kirk was first suspected of illegally distributing prescription drugs in 1979, when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration looked into whether he was selling methaqualone, a sedative to treat insomnia.

Five years later, the California Medical Board, an agency that monitors the professional conduct of physicians, investigated charges that Kirk was illegally prescribing drugs.

New suspicions were involved in February, 1988, when 18 federal and state investigators wearing bulletproof vests stormed into Kirk’s medical clinic and seized his files. Kirk’s practice was one of 24 searched that month by a task force looking into allegations that diagnostic laboratories were fraudulently charging insurance companies millions of dollars for unnecessary medical tests.

No criminal charges ever resulted against Kirk from any of the investigations. Court records show that the only official action was a warning to him from the California Medical Board to stop prescribing excessive amounts of drugs.