A federal district court judge has sentenced a resident of Butler County, Pennsylvania to one year and one day in jail on his conviction of conspiracy due to a misbranded drug scheme.
The Pennsylvania Board of Pharmacy prohibits pharmacists from restocking medications that have left the pharmacy’s control and these medications must be destroyed.
According to the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), if a prescription or a container of stock drugs falsely describes the lot numbers, expiration dates or manufacturers, then the drugs are rendered/deemed misbranded and should not be comingled with the pharmacy’s other stock drugs. If these drugs are comingled with stock drugs instead of being destroyed, they are considered illegal contraband and cannot be sold.
The convicted pharmacist, was the supervisor over a chain of several pharmacies, reported directly to its owner, who is not a defendant in this case. Most of the conduct that supports the charges occurred at a pharmacy in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania.
The pharmacy involved supplied nursing home chains with individualized medication packages for their residents. If the nursing home had unused pills from prescriptions because there was a change in prescription or perhaps the resident died, the pharmacy delivery drivers were instructed to collect the unused medications and return them to the pharmacy. Once these drugs were returned to the pharmacy, the drugs would be removed from their packaging and returned to stock. As a result, pills with different lot numbers, different expiration dates and different manufacturers were comingled. These comingled pills were then used to fill new prescriptions.
The defendant was the leader and organizer of this criminal conduct. Another employee who supervised the involved pharmacy, reported directly to the defendant, carried out this illegal scheme on a day-to-day basis. She was previously sentenced to probation for her role in the scheme.
During the investigation, it was discovered that the defendant had not only comingled unused prescription medications returned from the nursing home but had recovered some medications that had been stolen and in the possession of a drug addict and he restocked those medications as well.
It was not determined whether any patient was harmed because of the defendant’s action.
