Doctor convicted of illegally selling powerful painkillers

A San Fernando Valley physician was convicted Wednesday of improperly prescribing powerful painkillers to his drug-addicted patients and undercover DEA agents.

The federal court jury deadlocked on an allegation that the doctor, Masoud Bamdad, was responsible for the overdose death of a 23-year-old patient.

Bamdad, 55, was convicted of 13 counts of illegal drug distribution and faces a maximum sentence of more than 300 years in prison, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office said. U.S. District Judge George H. Wu set a hearing for May 18 at which prosecutors are expected to say whether they will retry Bamdad in the death of Alex Clyburn, a patient who overdosed on Roxicodone last year.

The verdict followed a two-week trial in which prosecutors portrayed Bamdad as a common drug dealer who sold prescriptions for powerful drugs to patients who he knew had no legitimate medical need.

One of the drugs he prescribed, oxycodone, is so powerful it’s referred to as “synthetic heroin,” and used primarily to treat patients with cancer, lupus and severe burns, authorities said. Bamdad prescribed the drug to young, apparently healthy patients who paid him $140 or more for the prescriptions.

Authorities said he admitted receiving about $30,000 a week in cash -- or $1.5 million a year -- for prescriptions given out at his clinic in San Fernando.

Government prosecutors buttressed their case with video recordings made by undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agents who pretended to be patients seeking pain medication.

In the tapes, Bamdad, who went to medical school in Iran, can be heard calling his “patients” drug addicts before prescribing them the medications they seek.

At one point he told an undercover agent “you’re the healthiest one I’ve seen today.”

Bamdad took the stand in his own defense last week and blamed the DEA for entrapping him, but did not elaborate. He told jurors he could not tell which of his patients were addicted to drugs and which weren’t.

Jurors told Wu they were deadlocked on the question of whether the Roxicodone in Clyburn’s system when he died came from a prescription written by Bamdad.

Bamdad’s attorney, David J.P. Kaloyanides, argued that Clyburn had another source for the drugs and that there was no evidence linking Bamdad to the specific dose that killed him.

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scott.glover@latimes.com