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George Blatti, age 78, of Nassau County, received his sentence of five to 15 years in prison for the deaths on Monday, Jan. 22, according to the Nassau County District Attorney.
According to the investigation and his guilty plea, between 2016 and 2018, Blatti prescribed patients addicted to opioids thousands of pills – such as oxycodone, morphine, clonazepam, alprazolam, and oxycontin – with no exam or medical history.
Through 2019, Blatti would meet his patients at a makeshift office in a former Radio Shack space in Franklin Square. The space still had Radio Shack merchandise up on the walls.
After losing access to the building, he began seeing patients in his car. He would prescribe patients medications with no examination in the parking lot of the Rockville Centre hotel where he lived or a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts.
Blatti was originally licensed to practice medicine in 1976; however, the DA’s Office said he had no specialization in pain management. He used paper prescriptions, which allowed him to bypass the oversight of the state’s electronic prescription system.
Moreover, authorities said Blatti sometimes prescribed opioids to people he had never met, at the request of his patients.
Five people died of an overdose as a result of his overprescribing:
- Geraldine Sabatasso, age 50. In just over six months, she was given 35 prescriptions for more than 4,000 pills. She died in March 2016.
- Michael Kinzer, age 44. He was given over 1,000 pills in less than six months. Kinzer was hospitalized for an overdose in October 2016 but recovered; a month later and two days after seeing Blatti again, he died of an overdose of alprazolam and oxycontin.
- Robert Mielinis, age 55. Over seven months, Mielinis was given 49 prescriptions for thousands of alprazolam, oxycodone, and Percocet pills – at one point, he was prescribed nine times the maximum daily dose of painkillers. He died in January 2017.
- Sean Quigley, age 31, was a volunteer firefighter from Floral Park. Quigley struggled with opioid addiction for nearly a decade and had a failing liver. Despite this, Blatti prescribed him over 180 oxycodone pills. He died in December 2017, 11 days after the final prescription.
- Diane Woodring, age 53 of Port Washington. She died in September 2018 after combining oxycodone, alprazolam, mirtazapine, and valproic acid, all of which Blatti prescribed to her.
“We entrust doctors with our care every day, assuming that their medical expertise and ethical oath to do no harm will ensure our health and safety,” said Nassau County DA Anne T. Donnelly.
“George Blatti did not live up to his oath. He failed his patients and caused inconceivable suffering to their families.”
Blatti surrendered his medical license when he was arrested in 2019. He pleaded guilty to five counts of second-degree manslaughter in October 2023.
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