LOCKPORT, N.Y. — A man from North Tonawanda was charged on Thursday by the United States WNY district attorney for a criminal complaint with conspiracy to distribute oxymorphone.
Michael Ostolski was a nurse practitioner working at Acacia Family Health in Lockport who was allowed to prescribe and dispense controlled substances due to his job but took advantage of that.
Ostolski over-prescribed numerous people who were his patients who had agreed to sell the pills he prescribed for money. The sellers would follow up with the money he required from sales when they returned for an office visit.
Those follow-up visits were being billed to both Medicare and Medicaid insurance. It had been discovered that over the course of August 2021 to September 2023, Ostolski had prescribed over 123 prescriptions of oxymorphone, which totaled 13,000 pills.
Investigators went undercover and managed to purchase some of these prescriptions from Ostolski, where during some of the interactions he received cash payments.
The defendant's charges carry a potential maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
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