LOS ANGELES — Anna Nicole Smith's former attorney and boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, has been charged with giving her prescription drugs in the years leading up to her fatal overdose in 2007.
The 40-year-old Stern, along with doctors Sandeep Kapoor, 40, and Khristine Eroshevich, 61, were each charged Thursday with three felony counts of conspiracy and several other charges of fraudulent prescriptions, according to The Associated Press.
Both Stern and Kapoor were released Thursday night after they each posted $20,000 bail. Eroshevich is expected to surrender Monday, AP says.
Prosecutors said the doctors gave the drugs, including opiates, to Stern, who in turn passed them to the Playboy Playmate. The prescriptions were issued between June 2004 and January 2007.
"These individuals repeatedly and excessively furnished thousands of prescription pills to Anna Nicole Smith, often for no legitimate medical purpose," said California Attorney General Jerry Brown in a statement.
Eroshevich, a Los Angeles psychiatrist and friend of Smith's, is said to have authorized all 11 of the prescription medications discovered in the Florida hotel room where the unresponsive model was found prior to her death. Eroshevich's attorney, Adam Braun, acknowledged that his client wrote some of them prescriptions by using fictitious names for Smith.
"It was done for privacy reasons," Braun told AP. "She did the best she could under difficult circumstances in the best interest of the patient."
Smith was 39 when she died in February 2007. Her death came just months after her 20-year-old son Daniel also died from of a lethal combination of drugs.
Braun said Eroshevich began treating Smith shortly after her son's death.
According to documents obtained by AP, more than 600 pills were missing from prescriptions issued in the five weeks prior to Smith's death, with most of the drugs prescribed in Stern's name.
Stern once claimed to be the father of Smith's daughter, Dannielynn, who stands to inherit the oil fortune of her late second husband, J. Howard Marshall.
DNA tests later proved Smith's ex-boyfriend, Larry Birkhead, to be the father of Dannielynn.
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