Well, no wonder she overdosed. Anna Nicole Smith’s nice Jewish attorney/boyfriend was helping her illegally acquire “thousands of prescription drugs.” Howard K. Stern, the L.A.-born attorney was charged alongside two doctors with three felony counts of conspiracy for furnishing the Playboy Playmate with the drugs that likely killed her.
According to his Wikipedia entry: Stern is always referred to as “Howard K. Stern” to avoid confusion with the popular radio personality with whom he coincidentally shares the same first and last names. Stern was born to a Jewish family and raised in Los Angeles, California. He graduated with a B.A. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990 and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was admitted to the State Bar of California on February 25, 1994. Stern’s law firm first handled Anna Nicole Smith’s modeling contracts in the mid 1990s. When she fought for the fortune of her late husband J. Howard Marshall, Stern presented her direct examination at the trial. Stern’s law firm was dissolved around the time he became a co-star on The Anna Nicole Show. Stern maintains an apartment in Santa Monica, California, from which he operated a business called “Hot Smoochie Lips Inc” which is a talent agency that only had one client, Anna Nicole Smith.
With his talent agency’s only client six-feet-under and three counts of felony lopped onto his law resume, what will the law-breaking lawyer do now? Oh I know—request a cell next to Bernie Madoff.
Read more in the Variety report:
Stern and doctors Sandeep Kapoor and Khristine Eroshevich were each charged with three felony counts of conspiracy. Prosecutors said the doctors gave the drugs – including opiates and benzodiazapines – to Stern, who then gave them to Smith over three years.
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The medical examiner’s office has said Eroshevich, a Los Angeles psychiatrist and friend of the starlet’s, authorized all the prescription medications found in the Hollywood, Fla., hotel room where the 39-year-old Smith was found unresponsive shortly before her death in February 2007. Eroshevich had traveled with Smith to Florida.
Eroshevich’s attorney, Adam Braun, acknowledged his client wrote some of the prescriptions using fictitious names for Smith but that the intent wasn’t to commit fraud.
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The three defendants also were charged with a combined eight other felonies, including obtaining fraudulent prescriptions and unlawfully prescribing a controlled substance between June 2004 and January 2007.
Eleven prescription medications were found in Smith’s hotel room the day she died, according to the medical examiner’s office. More than 600 pills – including about 450 muscle relaxants – were missing from prescriptions that were no more than five weeks old when she died. Most of the drugs were prescribed in the name of Stern, her lawyer-turned-companion, and none was prescribed in Smith’s own name.
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