The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) has arrested a former Fort Myers medical clinic office manager, Kerrie M. Koch, on prescription fraud charges. On Tuesday, Koch was arrested in Punta Gorda, Florida and was charged with 14 counts of fraudulently obtaining a controlled substance.
Koch was accused of illegally obtaining 4,160 hydrocodone tablets at a total cost of more than $630. Police officials are not aware of what Koch did with the medications.
Koch was booked into the Lee County Jail under a $70,000 bond.
Investigators determined that during Koch's employment at an urgent care clinic in Fort Meyers from May 2005 to January 2006, Koch was misusing her authority as an office manager to illegally obtain the large amount of the drug, hydrocodone.
Seven separate prescription orders were traced back to Koch from a Fort Myers pharmacy using different names of physicians. Koch had also placed seven different orders for prescriptions of the drug through a Florida wholesale company. An unauthorized signature of one of the physicians located at the clinic where Koch was working had been used for these orders.
According to E. J. Picolo, Special Agent in Charge of the FDLE Fort Myers Regional Operations Center, "This case is a great example of the hard work our [FDLE Pharmaceutical Diversion Response Team] DRT investigators are doing to combat the problem of prescription fraud."
"The abuse of prescription medication continues to be a major problem throughout the state with an increase in the numbers of deaths related to the abuse. We will continue to work these types of cases in an effort to reduce the growing number of deaths and abuse of prescription medicines."
Labels: No Prescription, Online Pharmacy, Prescription Drugs
# posted by Network @ 10:09 PM
