By Joanne Finnegan

If you think you’ve been seeing lots of headlines about doctors in trouble over opioid prescribing, you’re not wrong.

A national investigation identified almost 150 federal court cases since 2016 alone in which doctors nationwide were prosecuted on drug offenses tied to the prescribing of addictive opioids.

The investigation also found that more than 1,000 doctors have been disciplined by state medical boards during that same time for risky prescribing of opioids and many of those doctors are still seeing patients.

The investigation confirms the fact that amid the country’s opioid epidemic, medical professionals are increasingly facing criminal charges—including murder—when their patients overdose on opioid painkillers they prescribed.

The report includes previously mentioned doctors, including:

The problem is twofold: well-meaning doctors who are trying to help patients in pain but also licensed doctors who have turned into drug dealers. Every month, law enforcement officials are arresting doctors who have gone rogue, prescribing drugs in exchange for cash, sex and for the money to keep their practices afloat, the report notes.

“There are a lot of doctors that are still writing [prescriptions] left and right, and have no scruples and no morals about it,” Vanita Hullander, a coroner in a rural area of Georgia, where there are high rates of opioid prescribing and overdose deaths that go along with it, told the newspaper.

The federal government, along with states, are taking action to try and stop overprescribing of opioids. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has stepped up law enforcement efforts to go after doctors and other medical professionals who overprescribe.

The government is expanding efforts of its Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit, and has assigned 12 prosecutors to focus solely on opioid-related fraud cases in a dozen hot-spot locations around the country.

Some states have also imposed legal limits on opioid prescribing. And states are using databases to track prescriptions and flag high-volume prescribers.