Dr. William Mangino was the whistle blower.

In opening statements at his trial Thursday, both prosecuting and defense attorneys said it was Mangino who informed authorities about wrongdoing at the Union Township clinic where he worked.

Mangino faces 11 charges of acting as an accomplice in violating the state drug act, one count of conspiracy to violate the act, six counts of Medicaid fraud and one charge of conspiracy to commit Medicaid fraud.

His trial began Thursday, following three days of jury selection.

Assistant District Attorney Diane Shaffer told the jury Mangino wrote prescriptions providing narcotics for patients who had no medical need for them.

After receiving those prescriptions for oxycodone and other narcotics, she said, patients would take them to pharmacies, and the pharmacies would bill Medicaid, constituting Medicaid insurance fraud. That cost, she said, is paid by state government.

Attorney Thomas W. Leslie, defending Mangino, said his client consulted for Drs. Thomas Wilkins and Philip Wagman in their Union Township chiropractic/pain clinic, providing nerve block injections to patients.

Deputy attorney general Jeffrey Baxter, who is co-prosecuting the case, said he intends to call former patients who told him brief visits to the clinic resulted in frequent and large prescriptions for the addictive narcotics.

Mangino, of Philadelphia, was arrested three years ago with Wilkins, a chiropractor, and Wagman, a pain management doctor, whom he joined at their clinic.

All three were accused of illegally prescribing large quantities of addictive painkilling narcotics to patients who went to them for treatment. Wagman and Wilkins were convicted last year and are in state prisons.

Evidence and testimony before a state grand jury showed patients would wait in line in the mornings outside the offices of Work Med and Chiro Med at 2017 W. State St. to get prescriptions that grew in quantity to fulfill their growing addictions.

Shaffer directed the jury to focus on April through September, 2003, when Mangino joined the other two doctors.

Wilkins’ chiropractic business had dwindled to 10 patients per day, she said. When he took in Wagman as a partner, the business grew to 100 patients daily.

By March of 2003, they needed help, Shaffer said. They paid Mangino $50,000 and moving expenses to give people “trigger point injections” in the business which she described as a “script mill.”

When Wagman required Mangino to give him the money he was paid in cash, Mangino became suspicious and told authorities, she said.