Case Database
Filter every documented case by date, drug, state, setting, role, prosecution status, and penalty. Search accepts brand or generic drug names, facility names, and cities.
Showing 9 of 730 cases.
| Case / When | Where | Setting | Drug | Method | Role | Prosecution status | Penalty | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Birmingham-area nursing home nurse diverted hydrocodone tablets; pleaded guilty to theft
2025-02
|
Alabama Birmingham, AL |
a Birmingham-area nursing home | hydrocodone | The nurse, responsible for distributing medication to residents, stole opioid tablets from the nursing home. A nurse discovered missing hydrocodone in July 2024, and an investigation found discrepancies involving over 100 hydrocodone tablets over approximately two months. The nurse was terminated by the facility after the missing hydrocodone was discovered. | not stated | Pled guilty to Theft of Property in the Second Degree, a Class C felony; received a 15-month suspended sentence. | none documented | source |
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Alabama Pharmacist Sentenced for Diverting Tens of Thousands of Oxycodone Pills from His Own Pharmacy
2023-11-03
|
Alabama Gadsden, Alabama |
Retail pharmacy (Midtown Pharmacy), Gadsden, Alabama | Oxycodone and hydrocodone | Pharmacist in charge over-ordered oxycodone from distributors, diverted the surplus stock bottles, and repackaged and resold the pills outside the pharmacy | not stated | Sentenced November 2023, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, to 54 months in prison | $110,620 (forfeiture) | source |
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Nursing home director of nursing used pre-signed prescription pads to divert hydrocodone
2023-04
|
Alabama Montgomery, AL |
nursing home | hydrocodone | Used pre-signed prescription pads left by the facility's medical director to fax fraudulent prescriptions to the facility's pharmacy, then received and kept the narcotics from the pharmacy's courier instead of administering them | not stated | Pleaded guilty to Theft of Property Second Degree; sentenced to 18 months in community corrections and surrendered nursing license | none documented | source |
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Pain clinic nurse practitioner conspired to dispense fentanyl by forging a physician's signature on prescriptions
2023-01
|
Alabama | a pain management clinic | fentanyl (Subsys and Abstral, Schedule II) | Convicted of conspiring to prescribe fentanyl outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate medical purpose; admitted to seeing patients without physician oversight while impaired by her own drug use, and to asking a co-defendant nurse practitioner to forge a physician's signature on controlled-substance prescriptions. | not stated | Sentenced to 20 months in federal prison after a 50% sentence reduction for cooperating in the prosecution of the clinic's co-owning physicians. | none documented | source |
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Nursing home licensed practical nurse convicted of diverting 638 narcotics pills from residents
2022-06
|
Alabama Georgiana, AL |
Georgiana Health and Rehabilitation. Also referred to as Butler County Nursing Home in the Attorney General's release title. | Hydrocodone, Oxycodone, Tramadol and Lorazepam | Diverted 638 narcotics pills, including hydrocodone, oxycodone, tramadol and lorazepam, from nursing home residents for whom the medications were intended; thefts occurred between November 5, 2020, and January 19, 2021. | not stated | Pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree theft of property; sentencing set for July 7; faces one to 10 years imprisonment and up to a $15,000 fine for each conviction. | none documented | source |
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Dothan Pharmacy Owner Sentenced for Selling Opioids Without Prescriptions
2021-04-27
|
Alabama Dothan, Alabama |
Independently owned retail pharmacy (Allen's Pharmacy), Dothan, Alabama | Oxycodone and hydrocodone (Schedule II) | Pharmacy owner personally sold controlled substances to individuals for cash outside any valid prescription | not stated | Pleaded guilty; sentenced to 87 months in federal prison and 3 years of supervised release | none documented | source |
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Nurse practitioner forged physicians' signatures to issue unauthorized controlled-substance prescriptions at two Montgomery pill-mill practices
2019-06
|
Alabama Montgomery, AL |
Family Practice and Mercy Family Health Care, Montgomery medical practices | fentanyl, hydrocodone, oxycodone, alprazolam, and methadone | Convicted at trial of issuing unnecessary and illegitimate prescriptions for controlled substances and, because she lacked authority as a nurse practitioner to refill Schedule II prescriptions without physician approval, forging physicians' signatures on those prescriptions; the unnecessary office visits and unlawful prescriptions were billed to insurers. Conduct spanned 2013 through 2016, initially at a Montgomery medical practice and later at a second practice she opened. | not stated | Convicted by federal jury on 17 counts of unlawful distribution of controlled substances, one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, four counts of health care fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud; sentenced to 10 years and received enhancements for obstructing justice and abuse of trust. | none documented | source |
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Home-Infusion Pharmacy Tech Diluted Hospice Patients' IV Opioids
2018-02-21
|
Alabama Birmingham, Alabama |
ContinuumRx of Central Alabama, home-infusion pharmacy (Birmingham, AL) | Morphine sulfate and hydromorphone — IV compounding vials | Withdrew drug with syringe, refilled vials with saline/sterile water, returned to inventory | not stated | Pleaded guilty; sentenced Feb 21, 2018 to 5 years in federal prison | none documented | source |
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Birmingham Pharmacy Technician Tampered with Opioid IV Bags Prepared for Palliative Care Patients
2018-02
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Alabama Birmingham, AL |
Home-infusion pharmacy, Birmingham, AL | Morphine sulfate and hydromorphone hydrochloride | Removed drugs from vials used to mix palliative-care IV bags and replaced them with another liquid, knowing diluted bags would reach patients | not stated | Sentenced to five years in prison for tampering with opioids intended for IV fluid | none documented | source |
Every filtered view has its own URL, so it can be linked or bookmarked. The same filters work on the JSON feed: /api/cases.json.
What each column does and doesn't cover
Every case states When (date) and Where (state) — 730 of 730. Beyond that, a blank cell means the source record does not state that fact, not that it did not happen:
- Setting: stated in 649 of 730 cases (89%)
- Drug: stated in 657 of 730 cases (90%)
- Method: stated in 474 of 730 cases (65%)
- Prosecution status: stated in 474 of 730 cases (65%); a documented penalty (fine, settlement, or restitution) exists for 77 of 730 cases (11%)
- Role: stated in only 255 of 730 cases (35%) — filtering or sorting by role silently hides the rest of the registry, which may still describe the same role in prose without a structured field
Why: documented failure modes
A separate text analysis of the 723 case summaries found 371 cases (51.3%) matching at least one named failure-mode pattern below. 352 cases (48.7% of 723) matched none of these categories - most of these are short board-order summaries ("licensee diverted controlled substances from their employer") that state an outcome without describing a mechanism, not cases where no failure occurred. A case can match zero, one, or several categories — these are corpus-level counts, not a per-case tag, and are not used as a row filter above: reproducing the exact category membership per case from the stored patterns did not exactly match this file's hand-curated counts on independent re-check, so no individual case here is labeled with a "why" that this code cannot verify.
Text names an act of replacing/refilling the drug with a named substitute (saline, water, an OTC pill, a cleaning product, etc.), OR uses swap/dilute/tamper to describe the same act, so the altered container went back into use looking unchanged.
Text uses stole/stealing/embezzled to describe removal of controlled substances.
Text uses a form of "falsif-" within 60 characters of a record-type noun (chart, inventory, transaction, receipt, prescription, etc.).
Text explicitly characterizes the prescription(s) as fraudulent, forged, invalid, or issued outside legitimate medical practice (including "pill mill" language).
Text names an automated dispensing cabinet/machine, or the acronym ADC, as part of the mechanism.
Text describes recording or claiming drug as "waste" (when it was not), pulling drug from a waste stream, or wastage that was not independently witnessed.
Text describes cancelling, voiding, or falsely entering a system transaction (an order, a return-to-stock entry, a cancel entry) specifically to conceal a removal.
Text states the FACILITY (not an individual concealing personal use) failed to maintain required inventory/records, or names a recordkeeping violation/negligent recordkeeping as the basis for the government action.
Text describes using a fictitious patient profile, a false name/identity, stolen patient information, or impersonating a licensed prescriber to obtain the drug.
Text states a failure to notify or report a loss, theft, or suspected diversion to a regulator.
Disclaimer
Case summaries are based on public records (DOJ press releases, court documents, news reports). Charges are allegations unless a conviction is noted. Analysis is educational, not legal advice.
Last reviewed: September 2026 · Content is educational, not legal advice.