Los Gatos Doctor Accused of Illegally Furnishing Drugs Appears in Court

Los Gatos doctor Marvin Bonham, a former top administrator of Santa Clara County’s Health Plan, and housemate James Michael Schneider appeared in Santa Clara County Superior Court Tuesday to face a multitude of drug-related felonies.

Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Daniel Rothbach said Bonham and Schneider, who are out of custody, met with their attorneys, the prosecution and Superior Court Judge Richard Loftus for a so-called "felony advance resoltution" hearing Tuesday afternoon in Department 65 of the San Jose Hall of Justice.

Bonham has been charged with 18 felonies alleging he traded prescriptions for powerful drugs—including Oxycontin—in return for cash and methamphetamines, according to Rothbach.

Bonham is being represented by criminal defense attorney Carol Marmorek. "The criminal complaint remains the same," Rothbach said when asked if additional charges had been filed in the case against the 61-year-old former medical director of the Valley Health Plan.

Prosecutors allege Bonham wrote more than half of his prescriptions for county residents who had criminal drug histories; offered to give minors methamphetamines; and gave them marijuana.

Both men are also being charged on the same docket, according to Rothbach, but they face different charges. "It's a single case," he noted.

The case against Bonham is the result of a multi-agency probe, spearheaded by the Attorney General’s Santa Clara County Specialized Enforcement Team, entitled “Operation Oxy Exchange.”

The charges against Bonham include: possession of methamphetamine for sale, prescribing without legitimate medical purpose, prescribing to addicts, possession of psilocybin mushrooms, possession of ecstasy and possession of marijuana for sale. He is out of custody on $1 million bail. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison.

"We discussed the case to see where it's going," Rothbach said, adding that the next hearing for the defendants has been set for 1:30 p.m. July 9 in the same department.

The suspects haven't had a preliminary hearing yet, and they haven't entered pleas.

Bonham, a pediatrician whose position at Valley Health Plan was purely administrative, allegedly wrote a substantial number of prescriptions for major drugs of abuse to 29 different adults in less than two years.

More than half of these people had criminal histories, with 10 having records of arrests for drug use and sales. A law enforcement search discovered weapons, sales quantities of methamphetamine, marijuana, and ecstasy, as well as a marijuana grow room in the crawl space under Bonham’s hillside estate in Los Gatos, a press release issued by the DA's office said.

Substantial quantities of drying marijuana hung in the garage and the home was littered with burnt foil and hollowed pens that appeared to have been used to smoke drugs, the release stated.

Schneider, 32, was arrested on Oct. 19 by Santa Clara County sheriff's deputies and faces three drug-related felonies that include marijuana cultivation, felony possession of marijuana/hash for sale and felony conspiracy to commit crime.

On Oct. 3, officers served a search warrant at Bonham's hillside estate located at 14704 Shannon Road and found weapons, sale quantities of methamphetamine, marijuana, and ecstasy and a marijuana grow room in the crawl space under his estate, prosecutors say.