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 14 of 730 cases.
| Case / When | Where | Setting | Drug | Method | Role | Prosecution status | Penalty | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Edmond hospital employee charged with stealing fentanyl waste from OU Health
2026-09
|
Oklahoma Edmond, OK |
OU Health | fentanyl | Accused of diverting fentanyl waste: a hospital report flagged more than 15 transactions involving fentanyl waste, including 'override cancel' or 'remove cancel' with fentanyl 100 mcg/2ml fifteen times; surveillance video reportedly showed the employee blocking the camera's view, removing vials from a drawer and putting them in his pocket, and using a syringe and needle to take leftover waste from drip bags for personal use. Police said the employee later admitted to the theft of fentanyl waste, totaling about $430. | not stated | Charged with larceny of controlled drugs | none documented | source |
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Lawton pharmacy technician charged after hydrocodone tablets found spilling from clothing
2025-12-03
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Oklahoma | Retail pharmacy in Lawton, Oklahoma | Hydrocodone-acetaminophen 10mg-325mg; dextroamphetamine-amphetamine 10 mg | not stated | Pharmacy technician | not stated | none documented | source |
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Oklahoma pharmacy technician permit permanently revoked after pharmacy reported 3,762 tablets lost
2025-11-18
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Oklahoma | Pharmacy (details not stated in available excerpt) | not stated | not stated | Pharmacy technician | not stated | none documented | source |
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Oklahoma grocery-chain pharmacy technician admitted stealing and selling hydrocodone and alprazolam
2025-08-13
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Oklahoma | Grocery-chain retail pharmacy in Oklahoma | Hydrocodone stock bottles, hydrocodone-acetaminophen 10mg/325mg and alprazolam | not stated | Pharmacy technician | not stated | none documented | source |
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Oklahoma hospital night-shift nurse disciplined after morphine waste questioned and patient reported no dose
2025-05-20
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Oklahoma | Hospital | Morphine (Schedule II controlled dangerous substance) | not stated | Registered nurse working as a staff nurse on the 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift | not stated | none documented | source |
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Oklahoma pharmacy technician altered oxycodone counts under coworkers' credentials and sold the pills
2025-05-07
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Oklahoma | Pharmacy (employer not named in source) | Oxycodone HCl 10 mg and 15 mg (1,171 tablets) | not stated | Pharmacy technician | not stated | none documented | source |
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Oklahoma City Anesthesiologist Convicted of Diverting Hospital Opioids
2024-07-11
|
Oklahoma Oklahoma City, Oklahoma |
Oklahoma City-area hospital operating rooms | Fentanyl, ketamine, hydromorphone, and midazolam | Claimed controlled substances were needed for surgeries he did not perform, then falsely reported disposing of the drugs while keeping them | not stated | Convicted by federal jury July 11, 2024, on 18 counts of obtaining a controlled substance by deceit | none documented | source |
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ICU nurse sentenced for tampering with fentanyl and hydromorphone at Ardmore hospital
2024-04
|
Oklahoma Ardmore, OK |
Mercy Hospital Intensive Care Unit, Ardmore, Oklahoma | fentanyl and hydromorphone | stole fentanyl and hydromorphone intended for intensive care patients; removed the pain medication from vials, refilled the empty vials with tap water, and returned the tampered vials to the controlled storage locker; admitted the conduct | not stated | sentenced to 12 months in prison for one count of Tampering with Consumer Products; pleaded guilty on August 31, 2023 | none documented | source |
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ICU nurse at Mercy Hospital in Ardmore pleaded guilty to stealing fentanyl and hydromorphone and swapping pain medication with tap water
2023-09
|
Oklahoma Ardmore, OK |
Mercy Hospital in Ardmore | fentanyl and hydromorphone | Stole fentanyl and hydromorphone intended for ICU patients and swapped pain medication with tap water in March and April 2022. | not stated | Pleaded guilty to tampering with pain medications; admitted and confessed to the conduct. | none documented | source |
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Ardmore ICU Nurse Pleads Guilty to Replacing Patients' Pain Medication With Tap Water
2023-08-31
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Oklahoma Ardmore, Oklahoma |
Hospital intensive care unit | Fentanyl and hydromorphone | Emptied vials, refilled with tap water, and returned them to the controlled storage locker for use on ICU patients | not stated | Pleaded guilty to tampering with consumer products (Aug. 2023); sentencing pending | none documented | source |
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Oklahoma nursing home LPN pleaded guilty to larceny of a patient's Schedule II medication
2022-09
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Oklahoma | Nursing home | Patient's Schedule II controlled dangerous substance (unspecified) | not stated | Licensed practical nurse (single-state license) | not stated | none documented | source |
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Oklahoma physician, pharmacist and clinic owner sentenced over pre-signed prescription scheme
2021-02
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Oklahoma | Home-visit physician practice, clinic and co-located retail pharmacy in Wellston, Oklahoma | Hydrocodone, morphine and fentanyl (prescription opioids) | not stated | Physician, licensed pharmacist and clinic owner | not stated | none documented | source |
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Air-Evacuation Paramedic Tampered with Fentanyl and Ketamine Vials
2019-12-09
|
Oklahoma Weatherford, Oklahoma |
Emergency air-evacuation service (Weatherford, OK) | Fentanyl and ketamine vials | Removed drug from vials, replaced with sterile saline | not stated | Sentenced Dec 9, 2019 — 6 months + 3 yrs supervised release | none documented | source |
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Tulsa hospital pharmacy operator paid civil penalty after employees stole hundreds of thousands of hydrocodone and alprazolam doses
2010-02-19
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Oklahoma | Two hospital pharmacies in Tulsa run by an outside pharmacy management company | Hydrocodone, alprazolam and phentermine | not stated | Pharmacy employees, including one responsible for invoices and medication purchasing | not stated | 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.