What Happened

Amber Kay Otero, a pharmacy technician at Southwest Pharmacy in Carlsbad, New Mexico, was investigated after DEA received a report of theft or loss of controlled substances from the pharmacy.

Otero was employed as a pharmacy technician at Southwest Pharmacy in Eddy County, New Mexico, from May 2012 through April 2015. According to the criminal complaint, she stole approximately 20,344 oxycodone tablets of various strengths from the pharmacy over that period. In her guilty plea, she specifically admitted that on January 15, 2015, she intentionally took oxycodone pills from a bottle at the pharmacy for her own consumption.

Otero was arrested on September 23, 2016, and pleaded guilty on December 20, 2016, to the misdemeanor offense of unlawfully possessing a controlled substance. The case was prosecuted as part of New Mexico's HOPE Initiative, a joint effort by the U.S. Attorney's Office and DEA to reduce opioid-related deaths in the state, and investigated by DEA's Tactical Diversion Squad and the Pecos Valley Drug Task Force.

What Went Wrong

A pharmacy technician was allegedly able to divert tens of thousands of oxycodone tablets over nearly three years of employment before the loss was reported to DEA. Key failures included:

  • Bottle-level access to Schedule II stock was not reconciled frequently enough to detect a sustained, years-long pattern of small thefts.
  • No controls flagged the scale of the alleged loss — over 20,000 tablets — until an external report triggered a DEA investigation.
  • The theft was discovered through a theft-or-loss report rather than through the pharmacy's own internal inventory controls.
  • There was no routine monitoring of individual technician access patterns to controlled-substance stock.

How It Could Have Been Prevented

  • Reconcile Schedule II bottle counts against dispensing records on a frequent, scheduled cadence rather than relying on periodic biennial inventory.
  • Restrict individual technician access to opened stock bottles and require pharmacist sign-off for restocking.
  • Use inventory software that flags cumulative small discrepancies over time rather than only large single-event losses.
  • Report suspected theft or significant loss to DEA promptly under the required timeframe once irregularities are first noticed, rather than after prolonged accumulation.
  • Screen and periodically re-screen pharmacy staff with access to controlled substances per DEA guidance (21 C.F.R. §1301.90).

Related Guidance

Sources