Category:
Drugstores
Region:
USA
State:
Massachusetts
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LI PHARMACY DRUG-RING: SOME PRESCRIPTIONS WRITTEN IN CRAYON
Date: 21-Mar-2007
MINEOLA, N.Y. - A suburban pharmacist was accused Wednesday of leading a prescription drug ring that provided customers - some with phony prescriptions written in crayon - with the powerful painkiller Vicodin.
Twenty-seven other people were arrested on forgery or criminal possession of a forged instrument charges, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said.
The alleged ringleader, Howard Topchik, 74, was awaiting arraignment in First District Court in Hempstead, charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance. Prosecutors said Topchik and his wife, Linda, were co-owners of Terrace Pharmacy in Oceanside, which sold nearly twice the amount of Vicodin in 2005 as the average U.S. pharmacy. Linda Topchik has not been charged.
Topchik, who is suspected of selling the phony prescriptions since at least 2000, earned approximately $7.5 million from the enterprise, Rice said.
She said the drugs were sold to customers who had phony prescriptions _ in some cases they were photocopies of original prescriptions. In other instances, the prescriptions were written in crayon; others had new names superimposed over the original customer's names, the prosecutor said.
Vicodin is a brand of hydrocodone, which has a street value between $2 and $4 a pill, Rice said.
Rice said she considered Topchik's actions "no different than someone selling drugs to our children on the playground or street corner." She said some of the purchases were made by people who then sold the drugs on the streets of some Queens neighborhoods, including Howard Beach.
Topchik, whose attorney was not immediately identified, faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted.
Some of the 27 people who were charged with obtaining the drugs with phony prescriptions have been given the option of going into drug treatment, while others are cooperating with what Rice said was an ongoing investigation into the illegal sale of prescription drugs.
"People are so quick to talk about the traditional drugs _ cocaine and heroin and marijuana _ when right in most medicine cabinets everywhere across this country are drugs like Vicodin that are killing our children," Rice told reporters. "We need to have the public to be aware of it and address this like the epidemic it's becoming."
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