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 6 of 730 cases.
| Case / When | Where | Setting | Drug | Method | Role | Prosecution status | Penalty | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Portland Mental Health Clinic Pays $20,000 to Settle Controlled Substances Act Violations
2026-01-26
|
Maine Portland, Maine |
Mental health clinic, Portland, ME (Riverbird, LLC) | Lorazepam and other controlled substances kept by the clinic | Failed to report known diversion by a clinic physician to DEA; no post-ownership-change inventory; incomplete controlled-substance recordkeeping | not stated | Civil settlement: $20,000 + 3-year DEA Memorandum of Understanding, announced Jan 26, 2026; no admission of liability | $20,000 (civil settlement) | source |
|
Northern Maine Medical Center Pays $125,000 to Settle Controlled Substances Act Allegations
2016-08-29
|
Maine Fort Kent, Maine |
Northern Maine Medical Center / Forest Hill long-term care unit (Fort Kent, ME) | Schedule II-V controlled substances — destruction and disposal recordkeeping | Failed to document destruction method/manner; distributed controlled substances at an unregistered location | not stated | Civil settlement, $125,000 — announced Aug 29, 2016 | $125,000 (civil settlement) | source |
|
Emergency room nurse sentenced for stealing prescription drugs from patient accounts via a hospital dispensing system
2014-03
|
Maine York, ME |
York Hospital emergency room | prescription drugs | Used their own name to access a computerized dispensing system at the hospital and withdrew drugs in the names of emergency room patients; also falsified private records. | not stated | Pleaded guilty to 10 counts of stealing drugs and three counts of falsifying private records; sentenced to two years in prison with all but six months suspended, a consecutive two-year term all suspended, four years of probation, $4,000 in fines and $8,318 in restitution, and prohibited from employment giving access to controlled substances; nursing license under suspension. | none documented | source |
|
Hospital pharmacist convicted of stealing oxycodone and Ambien from Mid Coast Hospital for personal use
2013-10
|
Maine Brunswick, ME |
Mid Coast Hospital | Oxycodone and Ambien | Diverted Oxycodone and Ambien from the hospital for personal use; pleaded guilty to two counts of Stealing Drugs in connection with a series of thefts in 2011 and 2012. | not stated | Convicted after guilty plea; sentenced to 2 years imprisonment with all but 14 days suspended and 2 years probation on the felony Oxycodone charge; concurrent 14 days imprisonment on the misdemeanor Ambien charge; ordered to pay $800 in fines; probation condition prohibiting employment with access to controlled substances; pharmacist license revoked in April 2012. | none documented | source |
|
Former nurse pleads guilty to stealing hydromorphone from Mayo Regional Hospital
2010-11
|
Maine Dover-Foxcroft, ME |
Mayo Regional Hospital | hydromorphone | stole about $8,000 worth of drugs from her employer, took the drugs, did not administer them to patients, injected them into her body to dull pain from a previous injury | not stated | pleaded guilty to Class C theft; sentencing continued; district attorney recommended two years in prison with all but 90 days suspended and two years of probation | none documented | source |
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Nursing home nurse took Percocet from a resident's medication supply for personal use
2005-06
|
Maine Kennebunk, ME |
Kennebunk Nursing Center | Percocet | Took 72 Percocet pills from a resident's supply of medication under the guise of medicating the resident, taking the pills for her own use, between February 7, 2004 and May 8, 2004. | not stated | Found guilty by a York County Superior Court jury; sentenced to 9 months in jail with all but 5 days suspended, plus two years of probation with random searches and drug testing. | none documented | source |
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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.