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 12 of 730 cases.
| Case / When | Where | Setting | Drug | Method | Role | Prosecution status | Penalty | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Virginia Physician's DEA Registration Revoked After Concurrent Opioid-Benzodiazepine Prescribing Killed Two Patients
2026-08-28
|
Virginia Great Falls, Virginia |
Physician (M.D.), outpatient office practice, Great Falls, Virginia | Oxycodone/acetaminophen 10 mg/325 mg (Schedule II) and diazepam 5 mg (Schedule IV), prescribed concurrently | Concurrent opioid-benzodiazepine prescribing with no documented extenuating circumstances, no documented risk counseling, no lowest-effective-dose prescribing and no opioid reversal agent; both patients died of acute intoxication from the combination (March-April 2025) | not stated | DEA registration revoked and pending applications denied by final agency order (default) published Aug. 28, 2026; effective Sept. 28, 2026 | none documented | source |
|
Chesapeake Hospital Nurse Pleads Guilty to Diverting Hydromorphone From Cancer and Sickle-Cell Patients
2026-04-24
|
Virginia Chesapeake, Virginia |
Registered nurse, hospital serving sickle-cell and cancer comfort-care patients (Chesapeake, VA) | Hydromorphone (Dilaudid) from patient-controlled analgesia pumps | Used patients' identifying information to access an automated medication-dispensing/monitoring system, diverted hydromorphone, replaced vials with water or diluted solution | not stated | Pleaded guilty Apr 24, 2026 to obtaining controlled substances by fraud; sentencing scheduled Aug 27, 2026, faces up to 15 years | none documented | source |
|
Gate City Pharmacist Tampered with Oxycodone and Hydromorphone Tablets
2024-08-26
|
Virginia Gate City, Virginia |
Retail pharmacy, Gate City, Virginia | Oxycodone and hydromorphone | Swapped tablets for look-alike non-controlled drugs and shorted patients' pill counts, keeping the difference | not stated | Pleaded guilty June 2024 to tampering with consumer products; sentenced to 24 months in federal prison | none documented | source |
|
Norfolk Children's Hospital Pays Civil Penalty for Unregistered Warehouse Fentanyl Gap
2023-11-16
|
Virginia Norfolk, Virginia |
Hospital pharmacy and receiving warehouse | Fentanyl (200 one-mL syringes) and other compounded controlled substances | Compounded controlled-substance shipments routed through an unregistered warehouse with no accounting for a fentanyl delivery | not stated | Civil settlement — $68,400 penalty plus DEA corrective-action agreement (Nov. 2023) | $68,400 (civil penalty) | source |
|
Virginia Nurse License Suspended Over Roanoke-Area Hospital Opioid Diversion
2023-03
|
Virginia Roanoke and Blacksburg, Virginia |
Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, Roanoke, VA; LewisGale Hospital, Blacksburg, VA | Opioids | Took pain medication from patients reporting severe pain, falsely documented it had been administered, and used the diverted opioids herself while on duty; did not disclose a prior termination from a senior living facility to either hospital | not stated | Virginia Board of Nursing suspended the nursing license, reported March 2023 | none documented | source |
|
Danville Hospital Nurse Sentenced for Tampering with Fentanyl and Hydromorphone
2022-03-04
|
Virginia Danville, Virginia |
RN, Sovah Health-Danville (Danville, VA) | Fentanyl and hydromorphone (Dilaudid) vials | Popped tops off fentanyl vials in an AcuDose machine using her unique access code, diverting the drug for personal use; denied tampering to investigators in two separate interviews before admitting it | not stated | Pleaded guilty May 2021; sentenced Mar 4, 2022 to 36 months in federal prison | $4,360,000 (civil settlement) | source |
|
Sentara Norfolk Pharmacy Technician Stole 50,000+ Controlled Substance Units
2021-08-13
|
Virginia Norfolk, Virginia |
Hospital pharmacy (Sentara Norfolk General Hospital), Virginia | Prescription opioids and other controlled substances (50,000+ dosage units) | Exploited his role restocking the automated medication dispensing/monitoring system, falsifying records and intercepting audit reports to hide the theft | not stated | Pleaded guilty to acquiring controlled substances by fraud; faced up to 4 years in prison | none documented | source |
|
Roanoke Pharmacist Sentenced for Tampering with Hydromorphone Vials
2021-01-29
|
Virginia Roanoke, Virginia |
Pharmacist, Home Choice Partners (Roanoke, VA) | Hydromorphone — 50 mL vial | Replaced hydromorphone in a narcotics-cabinet vial with saline over about nine months; caught after a needle and bloody tissue were found in a bathroom, prompting an all-staff drug test | not stated | Pleaded guilty Sept 2020 to tampering with a consumer product; sentenced Jan 29, 2021 to 12 months + 1 day | none documented | source |
|
Virginia Rite Aid Pharmacist Pleads Guilty to Filling Fraudulent Prescriptions in Pets' Names
2020-06-02
|
Virginia Saltville, Virginia |
Pharmacist, Rite Aid (Saltville, VA) | Controlled substances prescribed nominally to five dogs | Filled ~47 fraudulent/altered prescriptions written in pets' names via his girlfriend's veterinary clinic, including after one animal's death, to obtain drugs for personal use | not stated | Pleaded guilty June 2020 to obtaining drugs by fraud and misuse of a DEA registration number; sentencing set for Aug. 28, 2020 | none documented | source |
|
Nurse accused of diverting fentanyl and hydromorphone at Danville hospital
2020-05
|
Virginia Danville, VA |
Sovah Health-Danville | fentanyl and injectable hydromorphone | Was accused of diverting and tampering with vials of fentanyl and injectable hydromorphone intended for patients; hospital discovered that tops of several vials had been removed or tampered with, including 14 of 20 fentanyl vials whose tops popped off and one vial with a dry white film appearing to be superglue. | not stated | Was already serving a three-year prison sentence for tampering with consumer products at Sovah Health-Danville. | none documented | source |
|
Virginia Nurse License Suspended Over Roanoke-Area Nursing Home Opioid Diversion
2020
|
Virginia Roanoke and Lynchburg, Virginia |
Pheasant Ridge Nursing and Rehab Center, Roanoke, VA; Central Healthcare, Lynchburg, VA | Opioids | Diverted opioids for personal and unauthorized consumption across multiple healthcare employers, including LewisGale, Carilion, and a home-health agency | not stated | Virginia Board of Nursing suspended the nursing license, reported as 2020; source states only the year | none documented | source |
|
Virginia-licensed pharmacist self-administered diverted phentermine on duty; suspension stayed by consent order
2006-05
|
Virginia | not stated | Phentermine HCl 37.5 mg (Schedule IV) | not stated | Pharmacist | 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.