Prescription Drugs Fraud Case – Stahl Gasiorowski Criminal Defense Lawyers
A Warren Township, New Jersey resident and pharmacist was represented by New Jersey / New York Criminal Defense Attorney Robert G. Stahl, who secured a two-year probation sentence after the defendant was charged federally with nine others in connection with a multimillion-dollar online prescription drugs fraud scheme.
The pharmacist operated two bricks-and-mortar pharmacies, Towne Pharmacy in Middlesex County, New Jersey and the Hellertown Pharmacy in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.
The original Southern District of New York indictment charged the defendants with operating a two-year scheme involving more than $13 million in prescription drugs that were sold online in violation of federal law requiring physical examinations before scheduled prescription drugs are dispensed.
Stahl’s client had been contacted by operators abroad seeking to partner with his pharmacies in dispensing drugs but was adamant that non-scheduled drug prescriptions only were to be dispensed.
The two locations, like many small brick-and-mortar pharmacies across the country, were in tooth-in-nail competition with large national drug store chains, Stahl said. The pharmacist saw the new online dispensing business as a way to improve his bottom line as well as serve individuals who are immobile or otherwise not able to travel to his, or any other, brick-and-mortar pharmacy.
The pharmacist’s son, for whom he was caretaker, was paralyzed in a high school wrestling match and the additional income also helped to underwrite large investments in equipment and home renovations the pharmacist had to make for his paralyzed son.
But the pharmacist was not vigilant enough to conform his pharmacy to government regulations for online drugs and scheduled substances, Stahl said, and as a result a banned drug added to the list was not stopped from being filled online.
“It was this gray area,” Stahl told the Easton, Pennsylvania, Express Times. “This wasn’t unscrupulous, nefarious criminal activity. But he acknowledged in pleading guilty that he should have took notice and steps to stop orders for the drug.”
That negligence, Stahl said, landed the pharmacist in criminal court and left his financial life in tatters. In addition to probation the defendant agreed to forfeit more than $300,000 in return for unfreezing assets needed for his son.
“He’s trying to put his life back together. That’s not easy for someone his age,” Stahl said. “He’s doing the best that he can,” Stahl told the Express-Times. The defendant also surrendered his New Jersey pharmacist license.
Coverage in the
Express-Times Report on Lehigh Valley Live
Our Offices
Mountainside, NJ 07092
New York, NY 10007