A 74-year-old Maui doctor accused by federal prosecutors of illegally prescribing hydrocodone, Xanax and Valium to an undercover operative will plead guilty today as part of an deal with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Chris A. Boulange was charged by criminal complaint March 2 and indicted by a federal grand jury April 6. He faces two counts of unlawful distribution of hydrocodone, one count of unlawful distribution of hydrocodone and alprazolam, and two counts of unlawful distribution of hydrocodone and diazepam.

He remains free on an unsecured $25,000 bond. Each of the five counts carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $1 million. Boulange’s attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Jacquelyn T. Esser, declined comment.

The investigation was managed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Hawaii State Sheriff’s Division, Honolulu Police Department and Maui Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael F. Albanese is prosecuting the case.

While free on bond, Boulange is prohibited from prescribing any controlled substances to any new patients. The DEA started investigating Boulange in June 2022 using an undercover investigator posing as a patient who split her time between Oahu and Maui, worked in a bar and hurt her neck.

The undercover operative met with Boulange four times to get prescriptions for an opioid or an opioid combined with a benzodiazepine.

The undercover operative met Boulange in a “restaurant/bar setting, and not in a medical office, and at no point did Boulange perform anything resembling a medical examination,” according to March 2 complaint.

The investigator posing as a patient told Boulange she liked how the pills felt when she took them with beer and that her bar industry friends provided her with Vicodin, hydrocodone and Valium.

In October 2022, analysts working with the DEA Document and Media Exploitation group analyzed data for Boulange kept by Hawaii’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program from 2013 through 2022. The top eight prescribed drugs made up 89.11% of all units of medication filled by Boulange, including “several medications that are among the most abused by drug seekers,” according to court documents.

The list included four different opioids (oxycodone, methadone, morphine and hydrocodone), two benzodiazepines (diazepam and alprazolam) and a muscle relaxer (carisoprodol).

Boulange’s “most prescribed controlled substance was oxycodone,” accounting for 36.44% of all controlled- substance prescriptions, over 1.2 million units, filled during the analyzed time frame, according to federal court records.