A McHenry doctor pleaded guilty Wednesday to four counts of misdemeanor criminal distribution of a controlled substance in a case that was the first of its kind in more than a decade in McHenry County.
Thomas C. Tilot, 69, of McHenry, was sentenced to one year of probation, has to pay $2,716.50 in fines and fees, and is banned from ever practicing medicine again, McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally said.
Tilot’s physician and surgeon license was suspended in September 2019 for “inappropriate controlled substance prescribing to patients of his practice,” Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation spokesman Chris Slaby said. His license remains under suspension.
Tilot was initially charged in 2019 with 25 felony counts for over prescribing opioids to 11 of his patients, according to the indictment. Those charges were dismissed Wednesday.
According to the indictment, Tilot was writing prescriptions for and overprescribing his patient’s oxycodone, fentanyl, morphine, lorazepam, methadone, alprazolam and buprenorphine.
Kenneally said because Tilot had no criminal history and this was not a case of him being “malicious,” he would have received the same sentence had he gone to trial and been convicted on the felonies.
“This (conviction) will be on his record for the rest of his life,” Kenneally said. “We consider this (sentence) on balance and a really good result. It is not a case where he was acting like … an unscrupulous drug dealer prescribing pills with bogus symptoms. In this case, there was no real malice he was just a bad doctor.”
Tilot over prescribed the pills “to the point he not only made his patients addicted but sicker,” Keneally said.
The case came about through an ongoing monitoring of McHenry County doctors conducted by the McHenry State’s Attorney‘s Office and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as a means of bringing the opioid epidemic to an end.
Kenneally said Tilot was “quickly noticed as over prescribing opioids” and he does see this case as a deterrent to other doctors.
The patients involved were notified about the negotiated plea, Kenneally said.
Source: The Daily Chronicle
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