NEWARK – Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal and the Office of the New Jersey Coordinator for Addiction Responses and Enforcement Strategies (“NJ CARES”) today announced that the state Board of Medical Examiners (“the Board”) permanently revoked the medical license of a doctor sentenced to prison last summer for his role in a narcotics trafficking ring that flooded the streets of Atlantic County with highly addictive opioid pain pills and other controlled dangerous substances (“CDS”).

Dr. Alan Faustino, 50, who practiced family medicine in Absecon, agreed to surrender his medical license for permanent revocation in a Consent Order with the Board on March 8.

Faustino has been temporarily suspended from practice since his April 2015 arrest by the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office. Faustino was charged as a leader of a drug ring that conspired to distribute large quantities of prescription narcotics, specifically opioids, to hundreds of members of the Atlantic County community.

“This physician was abusing his medical license and acting like little more than a drug dealer,” said Attorney General Grewal. “The permanent revocation of his license ensures that he’ll never be able to repeat his criminal conduct.”

 “Each time a corrupt or reckless prescriber is taken out of practice we gain ground in our fight to end New Jersey’s addiction crisis,” said Sharon M. Joyce, Director of NJ CARES.

Faustino was arrested following a four-month investigation by the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office. According to prosecutors, Faustino wrote and sold prescriptions – at $300 each – for “patients” he never treated. His co-defendants in the case would fill the prescriptions and sell them on the streets of Atlantic County.

During a three-month period between January and April 2015, Faustino wrote an estimated 690 prescriptions for OxyContin that placed approximately 81,000 pills on the streets, according to prosecutors.

In February 2018 Faustino pleaded guilty to second-degree distribution of CDS and was sentenced to four years in state prison in July 2018.

“Dr. Faustino knowingly used his prescribing privileges to supply tens of thousands of OxyContin pain pills to a narcotics trafficking ring that sold these pills to individuals seeking a high,” said Paul R. Rodríguez, Acting Director of the Division of Consumer Affairs. “Public protection is well served by the permanent revocation of his license.”

Under the terms of his Consent Order with the Board, Faustino is permanently precluded from managing, overseeing, supervising, or influencing the practice of medicine or provision of healthcare activities in New Jersey and must divest himself of any current and future financial interest in or benefit derived from the practice of medicine.

Deputy Attorney General Pavithra Angara of the Professional Boards Prosecution Section in the Division of Law represented the State in this matter.
Patients who believe that a licensed health care professional is prescribing CDS inappropriately can file an online complaint with the State Division of Consumer Affairs by visiting its website or by calling 1-800-242-5846 (toll free within New Jersey) or 973-504- 6200.

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