What Happened

Anissa Jeanne Shores, a full-time pharmacist at a retail pharmacy in Burnsville, Minnesota, falsified receiving logs to conceal the theft of an estimated 67,000 doses of prescription narcotics.

Shores was responsible for maintaining the pharmacy's controlled-substance inventory records. Beginning in 2011, she falsified the pharmacy's written and computer receiving logs to understate incoming shipments of medication, then stole the difference between the true and recorded quantities for her own use. Over the course of the scheme she diverted an estimated 67,000 dosage units of hydrocodone, oxycodone, carisoprodol, diazepam, and the non-controlled drug tramadol.

She was charged by criminal information on October 16, 2014, and pleaded guilty on October 28, 2014, to one count of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud.

What Went Wrong

A pharmacist entrusted with the pharmacy's own controlled-substance recordkeeping was able to falsify the records that would otherwise have caught the theft. Key failures included:

  • The same employee who recorded incoming shipments was also able to alter those records without independent verification.
  • Receiving logs were not reconciled against supplier invoices or shipping records by anyone other than the person entering them.
  • A scheme reaching an estimated 67,000 dosage units was not caught by routine inventory counts over the course of roughly three years.

How It Could Have Been Prevented

  • Separate the duties of receiving and recording controlled-substance shipments from the duties of reconciling and auditing those same records.
  • Reconcile pharmacy receiving logs directly against wholesaler invoices and shipping manifests on a routine, independent basis.
  • Conduct physical inventory counts frequently enough to catch large-scale shortfalls well before they reach tens of thousands of dosage units.
  • Rotate or provide independent oversight of the staff member responsible for controlled-substance recordkeeping.

Related Guidance

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