A licensed pharmacist who owned two pharmacies in the Phoenix metro area, together with a pharmacy technician employed at those pharmacies, used the businesses to process fraudulent prescriptions and move large quantities of controlled substances into the community. Federal prosecutors said the scheme ran from September 2014 until the pair were arrested in July 2017, and involved more than 200,000 oxycodone and hydrocodone tablets, thousands of alprazolam tablets, and more than 13 gallons of promethazine with codeine. The pharmacist and technician regularly handed coconspirators 100-count bottles of high-dosage opioids that had come directly from pharmaceutical suppliers.
Two local musicians were convicted as part of the same case. Investigators found that one of them created fraudulent prescriptions to give the diversion from the pharmacies an appearance of legitimacy, while the other was primarily responsible for distributing the drugs to other street-level dealers. Both recorded songs and videos during the conspiracy that referenced the drug trafficking.
The case was uncovered through a joint federal investigation designated under the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force program, led by the Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Investigations with the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation and local police departments. A federal grand jury indicted the pharmacist on June 28, 2017, and on July 7, 2017 agents executed simultaneous search and arrest warrants across the Phoenix area, closed both pharmacies, and took possession of the controlled substances. The pharmacist voluntarily surrendered her DEA registration the same day. Agents also seized firearms, bank accounts and vehicles.
The pharmacist and technician were convicted of conspiring to distribute controlled substances and conspiring to launder money involved in a drug trafficking offense. On November 28, 2018 a U.S. District Judge sentenced the pharmacist to 120 months in prison; the technician had previously received a 48-month sentence. The two coconspirators received eight-year and five-year sentences. As part of the judgment the defendants were ordered to forfeit jewelry and hundreds of pairs of designer shoes purchased with proceeds of the scheme.