28 August 2015 Julio Gabriel Diaz, 67, was convicted of 79 counts of distributing controlled substances after a two-and-a-half week trial in federal court, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.
LA Times Dr. Julio Gabriel Diaz is arrested at his Santa Barbara office in 2012. On Friday, a federal jury found Diaz, 67, guilty on 79 counts of writing prescriptions for powerful painkillers such as OxyContin and Dilaudid without a legitimate medical purpose. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)
The Inquisitr - Aug 29, 2015 In 2012, Diaz was arrested and pleaded guilty to 11 charges but later withdrew his plea, saying he was ill advised about the sentence he was facing and unaware that federal prosecutors would argue that his prescriptions could be tied to 20 people who died. ‘Candy Man’ doctor convicted of prescribing unneeded narcotics
Law Enforcement. Sleazy Details of DEA Cartagena Prostitution Scandal Emerge. A FOIA
request from Foreign Policy has resulted in the release of a Justice Department Office of the Inspector General report on the scandal surrounding Secret Service and DEA agents who accompanied President Obama to the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, in April 2012. The report is full of juicy, sleazy detail on agents making dozens of calls to prostitutes on their government-issued cell phones, searching for dates with transvestite prostitutes, and seeking to redefine "sex" as not including paying hookers to masturbate them and "prostitution" as not what they had engaged in by paying hookers for sex acts. The OIG said that latter claim defied "common sense and legal definitions."
Jan 3, 2014. A Culture of Corruption in Both Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. A new report has been released by the DEA regarding a culture of corruption within the DEA. That report indicated that special agents in the DEA have used prostitutes, used government issued cell phones to arrange meetings with prostitutes, and then took the prostitutes to government furnished apartments. Those agents apparently erased information from their government issued cell phones when they became aware of the investigation.
Man Accused of Over-Prescribing Pain Pills Under House Arrest in Goleta
HUFFINGTON POST 01/5/12 Julio Gabriel Diaz, AKA The 'Candy Man' of Santa Barbara, California
The tragic lives of his many more victims are told in secret, cries for help that can never be fully told. They just move on to another con to feed the habit, constantly hiding their shame and lies. Lost souls with heaps of never ending sorrows. A life of crime is the only way to survive. There are other Candy Men and pimps (boyfriends) to get them through until the next pain, the next fix.
Don't miss Dr. Sanjay Gupta's "Deadly Dose" documentary.
(CNN) -- It's the biggest man-made epidemic in the United States. That's how a doctor in Washington state described it to me as we sat outside the state Capitol in Olympia.
He was talking about accidental death from prescription drug overdoses. The doctor, Gary Franklin, medical director for Washington state's Department of Labor and Industries, recounted terrifying case after case and told me it was the saddest thing he had ever seen. I remember him telling me about a teenager dying because he had taken too much narcotic medication after a dental procedure. READ MORE (video)... Prescription drug deaths: Two stories
Edie Sedgwick was a legendary socialite, heiress, model and actress born in Santa Barbara, California. Sedgwick is buried next to her mom in Santa Barbara County's Santa Ynez Valley, near the Neverland Ranch of Michael Jackson.... cause of her death "acute barbiturate intoxication."
January 2012 LA TIMES: Dr. Julio Diaz has been under investigation for allegedly prescribing addictive painkillers and other commonly abused drugs to patients who had no legitimate need for the medications. The affidavit details the deaths of 12 patients. A Times review of coroners' reports identified several additional cases in which patients were treated by Diaz or received prescriptions from him and later died of overdoses. In an interview with The Times in October, Diaz initially said he was aware of only one fatal overdose within his practice. After being questioned by reporters about individual cases, he acknowledged multiple deaths and said he shared blame in some of them. "I do feel responsible," Diaz said in the interview, conducted in an examination room in his two-story office, which is wedged between a sports bar and a discount store. "I was the one providing the medications and perhaps there were some hints there that I should have known they were going to overdose." Looking back, he said, the overdoses "gave me a good lesson." Among those who died: A 49-year-old father who overdosed on painkillers after recently completing a 60-day drug rehab; a 35-year-old mother found dead in her bedroom by her young daughter, who was hosting a friend for a sleepover; an out-of-work county bus driver who overdosed on painkillers and other drugs as she grew increasingly depressed over the upcoming anniversary of her 20-year-old son's overdose death, which she attributed to her son taking painkillers that Diaz had prescribed to her. The woman's husband, Amos Barajas, was one of several deceased patients' loved ones who raised concerns about Diaz's alleged overprescribing.
DEA Agents Arrest ‘Candy Man’ ~ Accused of Facilitating Addiction and 11 Fatal Overdoses A 77-page affidavit unsealed this week by the DOJ lists the medications that Diaz reportedly over-prescribed most often: Oxycontin, Percocet, Vicodin, Norco, Fentanyl, and Methadone, to name some. Most of these drugs are taken to relieve moderate to serious pain. Many are habit-forming, and extended use increases a patient’s tolerance. The affidavit explains that numerous area health practitioners – physicians, psychiatrists, nurses, pharmacists – had written to the state medical board in recent years, expressing concern about Diaz’s prescribing practices and the frequency in which his patients would overdose, experience withdrawal symptoms, or have other issues with their medications. Diaz, known to many as the “Candy Man,” is also accused of trading pills for sex.
"My problems have gotten worse. Now I am also dealing with health issues, and it is definite that I will be needing surgery some time in the next month or so. I was served an eviction notice yesterday and am facing that situation also. I have zero income, no phone, no car, and soon no house. I am at a check mate position and just want to give up. I cant take this anymore."
Lost, alone and steps away from homeless, it is not enough of a deterrent. (the fastest-growing group of homeless people in the United States is composed of single women with two or three children) The characters change, the locations change, the substances change, yet it is the same stories told time and again. "After Helen persuades him that "Don the writer" and "Don the drunk" are the same person, Don finally commits to writing his novel The Bottle, dedicated to Helen, which will recount the events of the weekend. He drops a cigarette into a glass of whiskey rather than drink it. He recalls that while packing for his lost weekend his mind was on a bottle suspended just outside his window, he ponders, over a reversal of the opening shot, how many other people in New York City are in the same position as he." 1945 The Lost Weekend
It seems simple when it was just The Bottle. Now there is an excess from street drugs to pharmaceuticals. With no end in sight of tortured addicted souls. Growing are the professionals who make it all too easy: Emergency room doctors at a Santa Barbara hospital saw a disturbing trend for more than a decade – patient after patient hooked on prescription drugs shared the same physician. Dr. Julio Gabriel Diaz "In addition, two women taken to a hospital emergency room indicated they were among numerous people who used sex to pay Diaz for narcotics, according to an affidavit filed in the case."
"Yes every medic and ER doc knows him. His nickname is Dr. Candy. Yes, every time I ran a call and found his name on the bottles, I documented it. As did Cottage hospital. We and they can only do so much and document so much. However, there is nothing more we could do but document and file complaints. For whatever reason, someone decided to take us seriously and take the next step. It is a shame it took so long."
You're probably asking, What took so long? Blanco was one of the most murderous drug kingpin's in recorded history, having turned Miami into a city of blood in the late '70s and early '80s before coming to Orange County.
February 15, 1943 ~ September 3, 2012
1. Gerald Posner (interview) Back in the Limelight In
In the most lovely of cities you can hear story after story of women desperate
enough to prostitute or forced into some form of slave labor. Their faces meld into a stereotypical archetype you can recognize as if you knew them. Age is not their friend. For many of these women their drug addled brains convince them it is love with their captors. For years Santa Barbara's family and geriatric physician, Dr. Julio Diaz,
better known as the "candy man" was in business. Eleven known fatalities later and the DEA stepped in. Dr. Diaz was also known to trade pills for sex in the typical way female addicts become manipulated by anyone they
may meet or in a business association. It is part of the lifestyle.
Tragically, the drugs take away any sense of self and well being.
There are thousands of these stories. The few that the "candy man" brings up is a small evident part of these monstrous crimes.
GORE, GUTS AND GONADS they didn't come more treacherous than the
In 2012, Diaz was arrested and pleaded guilty to 11 charges but later withdrew his plea, saying he was ill advised about the sentence he was facing and unaware that federal prosecutors would argue that his prescriptions could be tied to 20 people who died.
