Baldwin doc arrested in drug raid

Dr. William Conway, whose offices are in the Baldwin Medical Plaza, was one of three medical professionals placed in custody last week.

Penny Frondelli

A Baldwin doctor, William J. Conway, was among nearly 100 suspects rounded up last week in a two-day series of raids aimed at slashing the market for illegal prescription drugs in the New York metropolitan area.

The raids, carried out over a period of approximately 30 hours, took place in Nassau and Suffolk counties as well as Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens. Although police primarily targeted drug dealers who distribute illegal painkillers, they also took three Long Island medical practitioners into custody: a doctor in Great Neck, a nurse practitioner in Brentwood and Conway, a physician with an office in the Baldwin Medical Plaza, at 865 Merrick Road.

Federal agents first raided Conway’s office in early March and carried out boxes of records. According to officials, he is suspected of illegally distributing nearly 800,000 oxycodone pills over the past three and a half years — writing 5,554 prescriptions between January 2009 and November 2011 alone — and has also been linked to the deaths of a 34-year-old man from Long Beach and a 29-year-old man from Hicksville. Although Conway has not been charged in connection with those deaths, a letter from the U.S. attorney’s office seeking permission to detain him attributed the incidents to his “systematic and callous dispensing of oxycodone.”

During the March raid, Conway’s Drug Enforcement Agency registration was seized — an action that should have prevented him from issuing any more prescriptions. But according to the office of Loretta Lynch, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Conway nonetheless persisted in writing prescriptions for “those who he knew were either addicted to pain killers or were reselling to others for a profit.” He and the other two medical professionals arrested last week are also alleged to have operated “doctor-shopping” operations, charging up to $450 — in cash only — to issue prescriptions for painkillers without putting patients through what federal prosecutors called “rigorous medical checks.”