CourtsASHLAND, Ky. · Event April 14, 2025
Kentucky doctor pleads guilty over 'research' semaglutide
Prosecutors said he logged the purchases on Venmo as 'Meal Prep' and did not tell patients where the drug came from.
A family physician in Ashland, Kentucky, pleaded guilty on April 14, 2025 to receiving misbranded semaglutide and offering it for sale with intent to defraud or mislead, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky announced the next day. Matthew Lewis, 44, owned Lewis Family Care and ran a weight-loss clinic there.
What he admitted
According to DOJ, Lewis admitted in his plea agreement that from May 2023 he bought non-FDA-approved semaglutide from suppliers in California and Georgia. Those suppliers “were not registered with the FDA as drug manufacturers or outsourcing facilities,” were not licensed pharmacies or wholesalers, and were not authorized to distribute semaglutide. He paid “a significantly lower cost than the legitimate prescription drugs.”
The vials “sometimes arrived … packaged in a vial that contained a warning that the drugs were intended for lab research and development only.” DOJ said the labels lacked adequate directions, warnings, an expiration date and an ingredient list.
DOJ also described steps to hide the source. Lewis paid through Venmo, Afterpay or by phone and “described the orders on his Venmo payments as ‘Meal Prep.’” He stored the drug apart from the clinic’s other medicines and “did not inform his patients that he was administering non-FDA approved semaglutide to them.” Between May 2023 and February 2024 the clinic earned $249,044.40 from it.
The sentence
DOJ said sentencing was set for August 18, 2025 and that the maximum was three years in prison. The Ashland newspaper The Daily Independent reported on August 18, 2025 that Lewis received a three-year probated sentence. The rest of the paper’s report is behind its paywall, so we have not repeated the other sentencing terms it describes; we could not check them against the court record. We did not find a DOJ press release on the sentence.
Why it matters
Most enforcement against “research use only” peptides targets sellers. This case is about the buyer side: a licensed prescriber who used research-labeled product on patients. The label did not protect anyone in the chain. For how FDA and prosecutors read those labels, see our research-use-only explainer.
What changed: key dates
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| Event date for this report | |
| U.S. Attorney's Office, E.D. Kentucky: Ashland Doctor Pleads Guilty to Distribution of Misbranded Semaglutide | |
| The Daily Independent (Ashland): Local physician gets three years of probation for federal crimes | |
| Amino Wire published this report | |
| Update: Added the August 18, 2025 sentence as reported by The Daily Independent. We did not find a DOJ release on the sentencing. | |
| Update: Re-verified against the DOJ release. We removed sentencing terms (home confinement, community service hours, forfeiture amount) that we could not check: they appear only in the paywalled part of The Daily Independent's report. |
Update log
- Added the August 18, 2025 sentence as reported by The Daily Independent. We did not find a DOJ release on the sentencing.
- Re-verified against the DOJ release. We removed sentencing terms (home confinement, community service hours, forfeiture amount) that we could not check: they appear only in the paywalled part of The Daily Independent's report.
Sources
2 linked records- [1] Ashland Doctor Pleads Guilty to Distribution of Misbranded Semaglutide U.S. Attorney's Office, E.D. Kentucky · Primary record
- [2] Local physician gets three years of probation for federal crimes The Daily Independent (Ashland) ·
Amino Wire reports regulatory and court records. Nothing here is medical or legal advice, and we do not provide dosing information. Named companies may respond; see right of reply.
