NY Nurse Practitioner Pleads Guilty

What Happened

In August 2024, Christopher Viagrande, 42, a nurse practitioner of Latham, New York, pleaded guilty to distributing controlled substances outside the course of professional practice and for no legitimate medical purpose. He admitted that from May 2021 through January 2024 he issued 149 controlled substance prescriptions to five people, and 28 more to two people between June 2019 and April 2020, nearly all for amphetamine. He admitted prescribing dangerous amounts to one person who was not seeing him for visits, without medical records, and prescribing to a second person who was never his patient. He faces up to 20 years in prison and surrendered his DEA registration.

“Viagrande admitted that from May 2021 through January 2024, he issued a total of 149 controlled substance prescriptions”
U.S. Department of Justice / U.S. Attorney's Office press release, Aug 16, 2024

Related Guidance

15 Red Flags of Drug Diversion — Behavioral and transactional indicators of diversion.
Investigation Playbook — How to investigate suspected diversion inside an organization.

Sources

U.S. Department of Justice / U.S. Attorney's Office press release, Aug 16, 2024

Case at a Glance

Setting: Nurse practitioner practice
Drug: Amphetamine
Method: Prescriptions with no legitimate medical purpose, including to a non-patient
Status: Pleaded guilty August 2024; faces up to 20 years; surrendered DEA registration

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

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Where this record connects to the site's working material. Links are chosen from the case's setting, drug and method fields.

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Last reviewed: September 2026 · Educational content, not legal advice.

About the author

DivertGuard is built and maintained by Alex Rodriguez, MHIIM, CPhT (also known as Jesus Rodriguez) — a drug diversion prevention program manager with more than a decade in pharmacy practice, including direct responsibility for a health-system controlled substance diversion prevention program.

Conference presentations

2025 — The Rounding Revolution: A High-Tech Approach to Diversion Prevention (with Emily Spiceland, PharmD)
2024 — No Pill Left Behind: Strategies for Comprehensive Drug Accountability (with Eric Andrews)
2022 — Ready for My Close Up! Implementing, Maintaining, and Expanding Drug Diversion Prevention Cameras (with Jeremy Quinn, Shawn Young, and John Bailey)

Other professional engagement

Faculty, ASHP Drug Diversion Certificate
Speaker, Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA)
Published author, Pharmacy Purchasing & Products

Credentials

Doctorate candidate — Doctor of Health Informatics (DHI), Rutgers University, School of Health Professions; research on health data analytics and the prediction of cognitive decline
MHIIM — master's in health informatics, University of Tennessee Health Science Center (2019–2021)
CPhT — Certified Pharmacy Technician, with 10+ years of pharmacy practice across retail, hospice, compounding, home-health, and hospital settings

The assessment items, weighting, and case registry behind this site come from that operational background — building and running a diversion prevention program, not from vendor marketing. Every tool here is free, requires no signup, and is based on published regulatory and professional standards (DEA, Joint Commission, ASHP, CDC).

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Related Resources

Diversion Settlements & Fines

Settlements, civil penalties and criminal fines paid by hospitals and pharmacies in documented drug diversion cases, with the amount, year and primary source for each

Penalty Outcomes in the Case Records

Counts of the outcomes the registry records state: prison, probation, fines, licence actions and restitution, with stated sentence lengths by band and by drug class

Registry Insights: Sentences, Fines, States and Outcomes

Sentence lengths, fines and restitution, cases per 100,000 pharmacists by state, and plea and licence outcomes, each counted from the case records with its n, plus charts of cases by year, state and drug class

NY Nurse Practitioner Pleads Guilty on Amphetamine