What do a South Burlington doctor, a Williston health clinic secretary, a Price Chopper pharmacist and a relapsed drug addict and his brother-in-law have in common? Prescription fraud charges.
As Vermont public health officials drill down on how to help drug addicts recover, police are pursuing sticky-fingered individuals – from all walks of life – whom they believe funnel painkillers into the wrong hands.
A review of Vermont State Police reports from 10 cases investigated by the Drug Diversion Unit offers a peek at the kinds of people who are involved, and the creative lengths to which they go to obtain prescription drugs illegally.
The Drug Diversion Unit investigated 236 cases last year, up from 82 cases in 2011. They involve doctor-shopping, prescription fraud and the diversion of drugs.
Forgery, fraud and fabrication
Police in 2011 investigated a former Suboxone patient and his brother-in-law in Bellows Falls whom they say stole their former doctor’s blue prescription pad and wrote themselves a total of 17 prescriptions, filling them at pharmacies in Vermont and New Hampshire.
One man forged prescriptions for 574 30mg oxycodone tablets, police said, the other man forged prescriptions for 712 tablets.
In 2013, the unit investigated a pharmacy technician at Kinney Drugs in Burlington who they said took 4,184 tablets of hydrocodone, zolpidem and Suboxone. She told police she gave them to her husband.
State police created the Drug Diversion Unit in 2010. It has grown from a one-man operation to a three-person team that works with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, the Vermont Board of Medical Practice, pharmacists and others.
“We’ve never been as busy as we are now,” said Lt. Kraig LaPorte, who runs the unit.
Perhaps the most well-known doctor shopping case the unit has investigated is the 2012 probe of South Burlington doctor Cynthia Haselton.
Police alleged that between 2004 and 2011 Haselton created fictitious names and obtained at least 288 fraudulent prescriptions for herself at the Colchester Costco and other pharmacies in Chittenden and Addison counties.
The Attorney General’s Office prosecuted that case, and in 2012 Haselton received a four-year deferred sentence with no jail time in exchange for pleading guilty to one count of prescription fraud.
“We would have liked to have seen more production out of that,” LaPorte said. “We hope that she’s getting the help that she needs.”
Attorney General Bill Sorrell at the time acknowledged he received care from Primary Care Health Partners, where Haselton worked, but did not know her, according to The Burlington Free Press.
Haselton’s fraudulent prescriptions were for Adderall and Vicodin, according to police documents.
The case was reported through a confidential informant who worked with Haselton at the practice, police said.
The informant became suspicious when the Costco Pharmacy called with a question about a prescription for a woman named Nancy Tindal. The informant, who had worked there 10 years, didn’t recognize that name.
Haselton later admitted to police she wrote prescriptions under three fake names and used the name of her friend Nancy Tindal, who lived in Maine, the police report says.
A state trooper traveled to Maine to interview Tindal, who said she knew what Haselton did and wished she could help, according to the report.
In a 2012 case from Rutland, police said one man, complaining of tooth pain and epididymitis, received 17 prescriptions for painkillers and other drugs from 13 providers: seven dentists and six doctors. He picked them up from 10 pharmacies, police said.
A pharmacist at the Beauchamp and O’Rourke Pharmacy in Rutland eventually reported him. Police said the pharmacist checked the state’s prescription monitoring database, police said.
Prescription database off limits
Law enforcement officers are barred from reviewing the online prescription monitoring database without a warrant. Police say the legal requirement impedes their work enormously.
Police are allowed to look at pharmacy records if they go in person. Sgt. Det. Thomas Hodsden traveled to CVS, Rite Aid, Price Chopper, Hannaford, Wilcox Pharmacy, Walgreens and Wal-Mart for his investigations, according to his report.
In many cases, police investigators traverse the state – and sometimes New England – tracing doctor-shoppers’ footsteps.
Lawmakers insist granting police access to the drug data would invade patient privacy. Although doctors and pharmacists have access to the database, they say pharmacists more frequently report suspicious behavior.
The drug investigators saw most frequently last year was oxycodone, LaPorte said.
The second most common was the sleeping pill zolpidem, commonly known by the brand name Ambien. The third most common was buprenorphine (brand name Suboxone,) a drug used to treat opioid addiction.
Another case involved an employee and former patient of the Thomas Chittenden Health Center, who police say filled 56 prescriptions for controlled substances, all issued from the center. According to records, only 22 of the prescriptions were legitimate and the majority of the fraudulent ones were paid for in cash.
One woman told her doctor that someone broke into the house and stole her medicine, fooling the doctor into writing her another prescription for methadone and Ritalin.
In 2012, a pharmacist at Price Chopper wrote and filled 11 fraudulent prescriptions in Vermont and New York. The majority were for hydrocodone-acetaminophen, a narcotic painkiller, police said.
The pharmacist admitted to writing fake prescriptions, according to the report.
“I have been going through some very hard times,” he said. “This past Wednesday I threw every R/X pill I had down the toilet.”
Police say most of the drug diversion cases do not result in jail time. Typically they involve conditions of probation or a plea agreement.
“A lot of them either seek treatment between when they get charged and before they go to court as kind of a sign to the court ‘hey, I’m trying to get help,’” LaPorte said.
The goal is to work with prosecutors to implement treatment as part of plea agreements, he said.
“Often times this is kind of the encouragement that they need,” LaPorte said.
Hodsden said doctors and pharmacies have become much more vigilant against diversion in the past three years. When he started in 2011 some pharmacies didn’t ask for an ID when filling a prescription, he said.
“It’s a lot harder to doctor shop now than it was even a couple years ago,” he said.
The sergeant has also witnessed the much-publicized switch to heroin among drug users, as the street price of oxycodone rises. A 30mg oxycodone pill costs $45, he said.
But he said you can still buy it, any day, anytime, anywhere.
“I never realized how easy it was to get pills,” Hodsden said.