Howard K. Stern and Two Doctors Arrested for Furnishing Drugs to Anna Nicole Smith

Late Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, 39, died of a prescription drug overdose in 2007, and an investigation ruled that the death was accidental.

But now two psychiatrists and the former confidant of late Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith have been charged with conspiring to give her prescription drugs.

Howard Stern, a long-term boyfriend and attorney, Sandeep Kapoor and Khristine Eroshevich are alleged to have fraudulently prescribed her thousands of pills.  Eroshevich was Smith’s personal psychiatrist.

The charges relate to prescriptions issued from June 2004 to January 2007. Prosecutors say that for years the three accused provided Ms Smith with thousands of prescription drugs, including the medicines found in the Florida hotel room where she died.

California Attorney General Edmund G Brown said in a statement: “These individuals repeatedly and excessively furnished thousands of prescription pills to Anna Nicole Smith, often for no legitimate medical purpose.”

He said the doctors had “violated their ethical obligations as physicians, while Mr Stern funnelled highly addictive drugs to Ms Smith”.  Brown said the trio furnished Smith with pills including opiates, benzodiazapines and other controlled substances.

Smith, who was 39, died in Hollywood, Fla., on Feb. 8, 2007, of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs shortly after the birth of her daughter and death of her son, who also died of a drug overdose.

Following Smith’s death, a legal battle erupted over who was the father of her daughter, Dannielynn Hope. DNA tests determined the father was photographer Larry Birkhead, who now has custody of the girl. Stern had also contended that he was the girl’s father.

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