A central Iowa dentist who admits he used his patients’ prescription drugs faces up a decade in federal prison.

Thirty-eight-year-old Shawn Michael Kerby has pleaded guilty to one count of obtaining hydrocodone by misrepresentation along with one gun-related charge. He’ll be sentenced in November.

Kerby has admitted he was a drug addict who wrote prescriptions for patients who agreed to give the pills back to him. In the fall of 2014, state regulators fined Kerby $2500 and placed him on probation for two years after a pharmacy in the Des Moines area reported Kerby was phoning in a lot of prescriptions for drugs that can be addictive.

In the spring of 2016, after DEA agents raided Kerby’s home and offices, he voluntarily agreed not to practice dentistry.

Radio Iowa