Physician Charged in Sale of Painkillers : Law enforcement: The Santa Ana doctor is suspected of selling excessive amounts of drugs in paper bags to patients for at least two years.

The district attorney’s office filed criminal charges Wednesday against a Santa Ana doctor suspected of selling excessive amounts of painkillers in paper bags to dozens of patients for at least two years, according to investigators and court documents.

The state attorney general’s office also is considering charges against Dr. Joseph Nicholas Gregurich, 48, a spokesman said.

Filed in Municipal Court in Santa Ana, the four misdemeanor counts accuse Gregurich of illegally prescribing drugs to patients, refusing to open medical records to state investigators and dispensing drugs in unlabeled containers.

Some patients at Gregurich’s clinic received initial examinations, but later were sold pills without follow-up examinations, said state Medical Board senior investigator Steven Rhoten.

Based on documents at Gregurich’s Town and County Walk-In Medical Center and Huntington Beach home, state and federal investigators contend at least two dozen men and women “would go in to the clinic for whatever their illness was and (the clinic would) give out Vicodin like candy,” Rhoten said.

Investigators say they also suspect that the doctor sold excessive amounts of Tylenol with codeine.

Gregurich’s records, which Rhoten said were a “joke,” made it difficult to determine when patients bought pills or how many times they bought them. But interviews with former patients led investigators to suspect that the doctor sold thousands of pills, he said.

Investigators with the Drug Enforcement Administration noticed that Gregurich was the largest buyer of Vicodin, a painkiller, in the state during a routine audit last November. They referred the case to the U.S. attorney’s office for possible fines, Rhoten said.

Gregurich, who could not be reached for comment, made a lucrative business selling thousands of painkillers in plain paper bags for cash, Rhoten said. One male patient spent about $10,000 for the painkillers in one year, he said.

Patients told the Drug Enforcement Administration and Medical Board investigators that a Gregurich employee regularly sold pills with the doctor’s knowledge, according to an affidavit.