Metro

Doctor who gave painkillers to overdosed patients gets to up to 20 years

A greedy Queens doctor convicted of recklessly prescribing painkillers to four patients who fatally overdosed expressed no remorse Friday in court, where he was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

“I did not create this problem,” said Dr. Stan Xuhui Li, 60, as relatives of his victims angrily looked on from the Manhattan court gallery.

“I dealt with the most difficult ­patients,” he said. “I tried to treat their pain. I did my best. I never intended to harm any of the patients.”

A Manhattan jury convicted the New Jersey anesthesiologist in July of manslaughter, reckless endangerment, falsifying business records, criminal sale of prescriptions and other charges.

His clinic treated drug-addled killer David Laffer, who slaughtered four people in 2011 when he held up a Long Island pharmacy for pain pills.

“I can find no benign explanation for what happened here,” said Justice Michael Sonberg in sentencing Li.

“[You did this] in the crassest terms, one day a week, remote from where you lived and where you practiced, Monday through Friday. It was designed to create disaster.”

Li peddled narcotics including oxycodone and the anti-anxiety medicine Xanax to as many as 100 patients a day out of his basement office in Flushing, Queens, prosecutors said.

Two of Li’s patients — Joseph Haeg and Nicholas Rappold — overdosed on a lethal combination of Xanax and oxycodone in 2009 and 2010, respectively. He was found guilty of manslaughter in those cases.

Two other patients also fatally overdosed, and Li was found guilty of reckless endangerment for their deaths.

The sleazy doctor pocketed $450,000 in cash over a two-year period and had $1.2 million in his bank account when authorities began investigating him.

“This is a fair and just sentence given Li’s egregious criminal conduct, motivated by greed, and the severity of the harm that he caused,” said Bridget G Brennan, New York City’s special narcotics prosecutor, whose office handled the case.