Two pharmacy technicians at a discount pharmacy in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood were charged federally with conspiring to steal hydrocodone and sell it for profit. According to prosecutors, the scheme ran from October 2015 to December 2017 and involved 56,108 hydrocodone pills.
Prosecutors said the pair falsified the pharmacy's inventory so that the missing pills appeared either to have been dispensed to patients or never to have been received from the distributor. The pills were then sold outside the pharmacy for a reported profit of about $10,800.
One technician pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to deliver and was sentenced in November 2019 to five years in federal prison. The co-defendant had been sentenced in July 2019 to a year and one day. A DEA official described the sentence as recognition of the seriousness of the opioid crisis.