A previous physician’s assistant has been sentenced to a few years in jail for pushing opioids at a Maryland clinic, The Involved Press noted Thursday.

William Soyke of Hanover, Pa., was sentenced for conspiracy to distribute very addictive opioids like oxycodone and fentanyl for no professional medical goal in a scenario tied to a bribery and kickback scheme.

Prosecutors said Soyke, 68, engaged in the unlawful activity while doing the job at the Rosen-Hoffberg Rehabilitation and Pain Administration clinic close to Baltimore, in accordance to the AP.

Prosecutors also said Soyke admitted to partaking in sexual speak to with female sufferers, inquiring some to bend in excess of while he tested their vary of movement and then assaulting them by rubbing his crotch towards their bodies, the AP documented.

Soyke’s sentencing arrives two months right after professional medical director Howard J. Hoffberg pleaded responsible to related rates in the bribery scheme. Hoffberg, 65, was being accused of having income from Insys Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical corporation, in between 2012 and 2018 to prescribe a extremely addictive opioid to clients.

Insys Therapeutics founder John Kapoor was found responsible of racketeering charges and was sentenced past year to serve more than 5 a long time in prison, the AP pointed out.

Maryland officers have explained that a record 2,500 residents died of opioid overdoses past 12 months.

A bipartisan coalition of point out attorneys common arrived at a tentative $26 billion settlement final thirty day period with some of the nation’s greatest drugmakers in excess of their job in opioid addiction.