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FD-350 (Rev. 12-5-78) (Indicate page, name of Detroit, Michigan 3A Date: : 10/28/82 Edition: (Mount Clipping in Space Below) NELLIE BELL KASSIM Title: NARCOTICS MATTER or Classification: 209A-302 Submitting Office: Detroit in drug By TIM BELKNAP IN WEDNESDAY'S testimony, Dr. KREBS DESCRIBED himself as the FreePress.Staff-Writer Ryan Krebs,~29, of Milan, supplied evi- product of a top-flight education at Stan- A federal judge dismissed charges dence contradicting testimony from Kas- ford University and the University of Wednesday against two of the eight peo- sim, who became the .government's key Texas-Southwestern Medical School. He ple charged with conspiring with Nellie witness after accepting a maximum 10- said he started working part-time at Kas- Bell Kassim in what the government year prison sentence in return for her co- sim's RNA Medical Clinic onGreenfield claims was one of the country's biggest operation. after answering a newspaper ad in 1979, prescription drug rings. Krebs.produced'airline.tickets support- the same year he began his medical resi- Meanwhile, in the opening of defense ing his.testimony that he flew from De- dency at the University of Michigan: testimony in the three-week-old trial, the key defendant claimed he was in Cincin- troit to Cincinnati Dec. 11, 1981, and Krebs denied that he had deviated from nati, visiting the.inventor of the Heimlich returned two days later. Krebs said he .accepted-medical.practices whileworking maneuver for victims ofchoking,the same stayed with.Dr. Henry Heimlich, the plas- at RNA and later at another Kassim-clinic weekend.Kassim testified he was writing tic surgeon who developed the Heimlich on Jefferson Avenue, where he said he phony prescriptions in her behalf in De- lifesaving technique used on choking.vic- signed an average-of six Preludin.prescrip- troit. tims, tions a day "with a lot of yariations on U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs-Taylor either side of that number.". Kassim had earlier testified.that during dismissed conspiracy-charges against Cur- that weekend shehad seen Krebs in De- Krebs said that other employes of Kas- tis Hicks of Detroit and Sam Fields Jr.of troit signing prescriptions on her behalf. sim forged prescriptions in his name, a Flint aftertheir attorneysargued.that the Kassim testified that Krebs was one of claim that was supported by government government, which rested its case Tues- seyeral doctors who wrote prescriptions, witnesses. He said that on one occasion he day,hadnot providedenoughevidenceto mostly for the painkillers Preludin and reported a forged prescription.toa federal support the charges. Talwin, without seeing the patients who Drug Enforcement Administration agent. Hicks and Fields were alleged tobe purportedly needed them. The prescrip In addition to Krebs, defendants are low-level employes of Kassim at several of tions were either sold or used to obtain Shirley Bradley Danner, Maggie Cury, Her Detroit clinics that the government several million dollars worth of pills that Linda Ricks and John Zellner, all iderti- clhims were no more than prescription were peddled in Detroit and Washington, fied as employes of Kassim, and Berngrd mills for junkies and drug dealers. D.C., testimony indicated. Levine, a pharmacist. 2094 -382 SEARCHED XS