17 Arrests Made for Forged Prescriptions; 8 Busted in Hicksville
Nassau cops wage sweep to combat growing trend of opiate abuse.
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Seventeen people, including eight at a CVS pharmacy in Hicksville, face felony charges of forging prescriptions at various pharmacies throughout Nassau County.
Eight of those arrested had attempted to fill forged prescriptions to obtain painkillers at the CVS in Hicksville, at the corner of Old Country Road and Newbridge Road, authorities said.
In one case, a woman posed as a doctor or nurse practitioner on seven different occasions and called in prescriptions for patients whose identity she had stolen.
That suspect, identified as Irene Cicolello, 33, of Copiague, then appeared at the pharmacy as the patient and purchased the drugs, using the women's stolen medical insurance plan. Cicolello was accused of calling in the oxycodone presecriptions at five different CVS drug stores between Oct. 23, 2011 and and Jan. 27, the Long Island Press reported. None of those stores were at the Hicksville location.
Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano and Police Commissioner Thomas Dale made the announcement Thursday of the drug sweep conducted over several weeks by the Nassau County Police Department’s Narcotics Squad.
“From police to probation, Nassau County is combating the prescription drug epidemic,” Mangano said in a statement. “...We will continue to work together with all levels of government and law enforcement to address and solve this crisis.”
Another individual allegedly stole a prescription pad from a doctor and wrote several prescriptions for Promethazine with Codeine. The other arrests were for individuals attempting to fill forged prescriptions at independent pharmacies.
Mangano's office also announced a new joint initiative involving Nassau County police and probation officers which resulted in the arrest of three probationers: two for illegal possession of prescription drugs without prescriptions and one on a violation of probation warrant for using heroin.
Arrests in Nassau County for forging opiate drug prescriptions have quadrupled this year; from four arrests in Nassau County at this time last year, to the 17 arrested this year.
The number of arrests for opiate possession and distribution more than tripled between 2010 and 2011. In 2009, Nassau police made 32 fraudulent prescription arrests and 388 heroin arrests.
In 2010, there were 48 fraudulent prescription arrests; 418 heroin arrests and 127 opiate arrests.
And in 2011, there were 33 arrests for prescription fraud; 227 heroin arrests and nearly double the arrests, 432, for opiates.
Nassau Police and Mangano's press office did not immediately have a list of the other suspects accused in the investigation.
Simba
5:12 pm on Thursday, February 16, 2012
Great Job !!!
TheGreek
7:16 pm on Thursday, February 16, 2012
Sorry, but these arrests are a drop in the bucket. In Florida the DEA shut off two CVS locations for excessive sales. The USA Today (and the Wall Street Journal) reported that "The average pharmacy in the United States ordered about 69,000 oxycodone pills in 2011, the DEA said. The two CVS pharmacies, located less than 6 miles apart, ordered 3 million."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/story/2012-02-06/dea-cvs-oxycodone-raid/52994168/1
Can 17 people account for street sales of million pills? I think not.
Simba
4:36 am on Friday, February 17, 2012
Greek
I know I'm with you, but you need to start somewhere and an arrest like this points out who is involved in the crime, it's not just a lunatic with a gun. This problem is working on the same design as Medicare fraud where patient, Dr and pharmacist are involved.
tj
7:53 pm on Thursday, February 16, 2012
These pills are worse then crack...as for pain...I dont know how anyone can say they relieve pain...They just make your body ache and hurt more...Sadly alcohol is the only recreational drug our gov says is legal...Alcohol is probably worse then pills...Medical marijuana could help so many of these people with pain and just for fun which is perfectly human and natural...
Joe Dowd
12:52 am on Friday, February 17, 2012
TJ: Agreed. Alcohol statistically is far more deadly than the others. I don't see this problem ever going away and all attempts to stop it are futile. All through history vices, drugs, even literature were banned by kings and governments. Ultimately they all become legal. One of the surest ways for a government to make a book famous is to ban it. Then everybody wants to read it. Kind of the same with drugs, gambling, booze, pills. They're fighting a losing battle.
TheGreek
9:28 am on Friday, February 17, 2012
Simba – I didn’t mean to belittle the value of the arrests. It’s a good start, and that many fewer pills and dealers on the street.
What I wanted to point out by providing the link to the USA Today article is that some small percentage of doctors, drug suppliers, and retail pharmacies will sell as many pills as they can, regardless of ethical considerations. This small minority is responsible for the majority of pharmaceuticals leaking out into illegal sales. Vendors without ethics will not stop voluntarily. The only way to stop them is to mandate that:
1) Doctors must enter all prescriptions for controlled substances online in real time.
2) Pharmacists must retrieve these prescriptions online before dispensing.
3) The system will prohibit cases of multiple doctors and/or prescriptions being given too frequently or for too many pills for a given time period.
tj
10:06 am on Friday, February 17, 2012
Wait a few more years....All these kids put son xanax, ritalin, pozac at a young age, these poor kids were made drug addicts by their parents...Do people think their brains can ever produce those chemicals again after a pill has been doing it for years?? Wait until they grow older and crave pills....Those prescribed pills are harder to come off then pain killers...These poor young kids go through withdrawls so early...
Simba
10:18 am on Friday, February 17, 2012
TJ the entire medical community relies on pills to treat your symptoms not cure you. That is the crux of the problem. We have a medical community that profits by keeping you sick enough to treat, not cure you. Take a look a many of the common medications and you'll see it is almost impossible to stop from taking them after your body has become reliant on them.
tj
5:33 pm on Friday, February 17, 2012
Whats even scarier Simba...Xanax is probably the worse prescription drug to come off...You go into seizures...But besides what those chemicals do..paxil, ritalin, prozac ect... The scariest part are the inactive ingredients that go into these pills that are just thrown in to actually get these chemicals into pill form...We are talking heavy metals...Titanium, magnesium, and all types of dioxides and plastics....One could just get sick and just from the so called fillers and binders that hold the chemicals together...Some nasty stuff...
Simba
6:02 pm on Friday, February 17, 2012
TJ talk to a Cardiologist, I happen to have an honest one, some cholesterol drugs are impossible to come off of after they work your liver.
tj
7:31 pm on Friday, February 17, 2012
Cholesterol drugs....if anyone has high cholesterol I suggest oat meal, beans, and cherrios.....that should bring that bad boy down...I just dont know any more...the world we are living in is so completely backwards...I think i just give up...
Simba
9:14 pm on Friday, February 17, 2012
Tj it comes down to we have made our lives dependant on drugs, electronic devices etc all to make life easier or so they say, to me it has just made life more complicated. After all you can't have the latest and greatest gizmo unless you rob Grandma of her Oxycottin.