Dr. Philip Dean of Warrenton pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to charges related to illegally distributing powerful opioid medications to women he had personal relationships with.Dean, 62, operated a neurologist office on East Booneslick Road in Warrenton for more than a decade. Prosecutors said Dean lived with and had personal relations with three female patients at various times, and supplied them with narcotics while knowing they suffered from drug addiction.Dean pleaded guilty to charges related to two of those patients, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri. Along with the distribution charge, Dean admitted to a charge of lying to Medicare to help pay for the illegitimate prescriptions.The doctor acknowledged in a plea agreement that the illegal prescriptions exposed the patients to serious risk of bodily injury, due to the potency of the drugs and the patients’ histories of drug problems.Dean now faces maximum penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine for drug distribution, along with up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for lying to Medicare.In the case of one patient, prosecutors said Dean knew the woman had lost a nursing license because of prescription drug abuse, and had been involved in vehicle crashes while driving intoxicated.Nevertheless, between 2015 and 2016, he allegedly prescribed her various opioid medications, including a fentanyl-based drug only intended for cancer patients. The woman does not have cancer, prosecutors said.Because the woman was using up the prescriptions too quickly, Dean repeatedly used the name of one of her family members to prescribe additional medications. He picked up at least one of those prescriptions personally, prosecutors said. Medicare paid for the falsified prescriptions.In the case of another patient, Dean issued her a prescription for the pain medication Codeine after allegedly exchanging sexual text messages with her. Prosecutors said Dean issued the prescription without conducting a medical examination.“This is an outrageous violation of the trust our society commits to physicians,” said U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen. “Dr. Dean violated that trust and exploited his drug dependent patients. On top of it all, the taxpayers were forced to foot the bill for his crimes.”Crime