PRINCETON — When 2009 started, Danny Wills was entering the first year of his second term as Mercer County Sheriff. By the end of the year, Wills had, in chronological order, been the subject of a federal probe, resigned his office and been sentenced to six months in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges of ordering painkillers for his own use with Sheriff’s Department funds. His saga was the top story of the year for the Princeton Times.

The story began in May when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, under a warrant obtained by the U.S. District Attorney’s Office for Southern West Virginia, searched Wills’ offices in the Mercer County Courthouse for controlled substances inventories, dispensing records, ordering invoices and theft/loss forms. Wills, who had served both as a West Virginia State Trooper and a practicing physician before being elected Sheriff in 2004, was still running a physician’s office from the Sheriff’s Department at the Mercer County Courthouse, a “controlled premises”, according to the United States Code.

Wills, who held onto his medical license once he became sheriff, would therefore be required to keep “complete and accurate records of all controlled substances received, sold, delivered or otherwise disposed of by him.”

On May 5, DEA Diversion Investigator Dominic Grant executed the warrant at approximately 2 p.m. and retrieved more than 80 patient files, information regarding a state treasury investment account and a folder marked “GIV invoices containing drug ordering information.”

GIV referred to General Injectables & Vaccines, a Bastian, Va.-based business that distributes medications and vaccines to physicians and health care agencies.

On July 16, Wills, citing that the investigation was becoming a distraction for the MCSD, resigned his post in a letter to Mercer County Commissioners Joe Coburn, Jay Mills and Karen Disibbio. Former Sheriff Don Meadows was appointed to replace him. That same month, Wills was charged with knowingly and intentionally acquiring undisclosed amounts of hydrocodone by misrepresentation, fraud, deception and subterfuge in federal information.

On Aug. 28, Wills pleaded guilty during a hearing at the U.S. District Court in Beckley. During the hearing, it was revealed that agents had located a total of 173 hydrocodone tablets in a locked cabinet and in Wills’ possession and that Wills admitted to the agents that he had been taking up to four to six of the hydrocodone pills daily for about two years.

Wills further stated he had practiced medicine at his sheriff’s office and that he had dispensed hydrocodone to his patients.

During his tenure as sheriff, Wills’ allegedly admitted he ordered 4,500 pills of the prescription painkiller from GIV.

Wills also admitted to agents that he had written prescriptions for alprazolam, also known as Xanax, a Schedule IV controlled substance, in the names of his wife and son, but that he had actually intended to, and did in fact, obtain and use the Xanax himself.

In December, Wills received a sentence of six months in prison, a year of supervised release, a $100 special assessment and $863.54 in restitution for buying hydrocodone with MCSD funds from U.S. District Judge Irene Berger.

— Contact Jeff Harvey at jharvey1@frontiernet.net or delimartman@yahoo.com.