Woman pleads guilty in prescription drug dealing scheme

A medical assistant for indicted Las Vegas physician Victor Bruce pleaded guilty Friday in the federal investigation into the physician’s prescription practices.

Jade Lepoma, 35, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey to one count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, the painkiller oxycodone.

Lepoma, who worked at Bruce’s Swan Lake Medical Center on Hualapai Way, is to be sentenced April 14. She has agreed to cooperate in the investigation if needed.

Her lawyer, Chris Rasmussen, declined comment.

Bruce, 48, was arrested last month on a single count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. He has pleaded not guilty.

According to federal prosecutors, he represented himself to be a specialist in pain management.

In court last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney Crane Pomerantz called Bruce’s conduct “egregious,” alleging he worked directly with a street-level drug dealer to unlawfully distribute thousands of oxycodone and other painkiller pills a week.

Pomerantz said the physician created “ghost files” of patients, prescribed the painkillers under the phony names and then sold the prescriptions to the drug dealer.

Lepoma and other Bruce staffers received roughly $1,200 a week from the drug dealer for their assistance, according to her plea agreement.

Since the summer of 2012, undercover agents made several secretly recorded street buys in the investigation and raided Bruce’s practice obtaining evidence of those buys, Pomerantz said.