Addiction doctor’s ‘sloppy’ practices led to 7 fatal overdoses in VA, feds say
An addiction specialist in Virginia regularly overprescribed opioids and hid evidence of his patients’ drug abuse, leading to the overdose deaths of at least seven people, federal prosecutors said.
Now, David Allingham, 65 — owner of Oakton Primacy Care Center — has been sentenced to 13 years in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a May 14 news release.
“Instead of treating substance use disorder, (Allingham) fed it,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum. “He flooded the greater northern Virginia and Richmond areas with over 400,000 oxycodone and amphetamine pills prescribed for no legitimate medical purpose and beyond the bounds of medical practice.”
McClatchy News reached out to Allingham’s attorney May 16 but did not receive an immediate response. In a sentencing memorandum, his defense called his medical practice “sloppy” but “well intentioned.”
“Allingham wanted to believe his patients, and thought that by doing so and engaging with them, that he lessened their risk of turning to dangerous street drugs,” his attorney, Bret Lee, wrote.
In January, Allingham pleaded guilty to three counts: conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and amphetamines, maintaining a drug-involved premises and making false statements in a health care matter, according to a plea agreement. It was unclear in court documents if Allingham was charged in the patients’ deaths before he took a plea deal.
Prosecutors said his recommended sentence would have been for life, but the charges he was convicted of have maximum sentences allowed by law.
Oakton is about an 20-mile drive southwest from Washington, D.C.
Medical malpractice
Allingham — who has more than 30 years of experience practicing medicine — was accused of multiple medical malpractices, including prescribing opioids to patients without examining them, excusing failed drug tests, prescribing drugs to non-patients and signing off on prescriptions using another physician’s name, according to prosecutors.
He also prescribed “unconscionably high” amounts of opioids to his pain patients, according to a government sentencing memo. Prosecutors said in some cases he prescribed more than five times the amount of drugs recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“In his relentless prescribing to patients suffering from or fueling drug addictions, the defendant not only ignored, but concealed, evidence that his patients were abusing street drugs, including fentanyl and heroin,” prosecutors said.
One of Allingham’s former patients said she became addicted to pain medication after seeing him, despite not having any previous history of addiction, according to the government sentencing memorandum. She said she lost her home of 20 years because of the cost of the oxycodone, prosecutors said.
Another former patient, who also lost her home, said she became a person she didn’t recognize after developing addiction because of Allingham’s prescriptions, according to the government sentencing memo.
“I feel so ashamed that it has crippled me,” the former patient said, according to the memorandum.
Multiple pharmacies and state medical licensing boards investigated Allingham’s practices, prosecutors said. In October 2022, CVS Health found a five-time increase in his oxycodone prescriptions since 2020, with 43% of prescriptions being “high dose,” according to the memorandum.
The national pharmacy told him they could no longer fill his prescriptions, so Allingham told his employees and patients to switch to “mom and pop” pharmacies, prosecutors said.
During a federal investigation of Allingham’s home and medical practice in July 2023, he lied to law enforcement and told one of his employees to delete text conversations with him, prosecutors said.
Patients’ overdose deaths
Between October 2016 and July 2023, seven of Allingham’s patients fatally overdosed “within hours, days, and weeks” of receiving a prescription from him, prosecutors said.
Allingham prescribed oxycodone to a patient for four years before his overdose death in July 2023, despite the fact the man had been charged with illegally dealing drugs, prosecutors said. Allingham also helped the patient with the custody of his three daughters by providing false drug screen results, prosecutors said.
“Of particular concern is the defendant’s further abuse of public trust by using his position to assist (the patient) in providing a false narrative in Stafford County court — perjuring himself to convince a court to allow a child back in the home of a patient (Allingham) knew was a drug addict,” prosecutors said.
Later, to try to regain custody of his kids, the patient sought out intensive rehabilitation for substance use, prosecutors said. When he returned from treatment, he asked Allingham about a drug used to prevent a relapse of opioid dependence.
Mismanagement of the drug, including mixing it with opioids, could have fatal consequences, prosecutors said. Still, Allingham prescribed the drug to him while he had an active opioid prescription, prosecutors said.
Eleven days after Allingham gave him the drug, he reissued him an oxycodone prescription, according to prosecutors. The patient died within weeks of receiving the prescriptions from him, prosecutors said.
“(Allingham) was given power that is reserved for only a small percentage of the population — access to controlled substances and the ability to direct those individuals trusting his advice,” the patient’s widow said in court documents. “(He) violated that public trust with the most devastating results.”
The US opioid crisis
Overdoses are a leading cause of injury-related death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2022, there were 107,941 drug overdose deaths in the country, according to CDC data. Of those deaths, 81,806 involved opioids, experts said.
“For every drug overdose that results in death, there are many more nonfatal overdoses, each one with its own emotional and economic toll,” the CDC said. “This fast-moving epidemic does not distinguish among age, sex, or state or county lines.”
Millions of people in the U.S. have an opioid addiction, according to the CDC. Addiction is a “chronic and relapsing disease that can affect anyone.”
This story was originally published May 21, 2025 at 9:44 AM with the headline "Addiction doctor’s ‘sloppy’ practices led to 7 fatal overdoses in VA, feds say."
