Dr. Noel Blackman was arrested on Sunday after law enforcement authorities stopped the Guyana-bound plane he was on at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
NEW YORK, United States, Wednesday February 10, 2016 – A former Guyanese minister of health, who was working as a doctor in New York, is now facing the court for illegally prescribing almost 370,000 oxycodone pills in a drug-dealing enterprise.
Dr. Noel Blackman was arrested on Sunday after law enforcement authorities stopped the Guyana-bound plane he was on at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
According to reports in the New York press, federal agents were tipped off that Dr. Blackman, who was recently appointed to chair the Board of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, planned to leave the country permanently, and ordered the aircraft to return to the gate as it was taxiing for takeoff.
Officials said US$30,000 was stashed in his luggage.
The 68-year-old medical practitioner, who had offices in Long Island, Queens and Brooklyn, was arraigned on Monday on a charge of conspiracy to distribute oxycodone, an opioid pain medication.
Federal authorities’ checks of the prescription records showed he wrote 114 prescriptions in 2014 for about 3,800 oxycodone pills and nearly 2,500 prescriptions for about 365,000 pills last year.
Dr. Blackman served as Minister of Health under a People’s National Congress government led by President Desmond Hoyte.