| Forging a new alliance |
By: JIM HAMMERAND, Staff Writer
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Posted: Tuesday, April 7, 2009 10:08 pm
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NORTHFIELD — Jessica Stadler is an unlikely ally in the fight to curb forged narcotics prescriptions.
The 33-year-old Northfield woman was arrested and charged with three felonies in August after police served a search warrant on the home she shared with her husband and children.
But now she’s working with law enforcement and pharmacies to help them identify the system’s flaws that let her to fraudulently obtain prescription painkillers, often with a simple phone call.
“It was so easy to do,” Stadler said. “In no way am I trying to justify this. I know what I did was wrong.”
A habit begins
Stadler’s troubles began after the 2000 birth of her second daughter, when she started to suffer from migraines. She was prescribed Percocet, a mix of the semi-synthetic opiate oxycodone and acetaminophen, the painkiller used in Tylenol.
But the migraines were debilitating, she said, and the pain surged back as her tolerance to the drugs increased.
Without the drugs, she was helpless. With them, she could get on with her life.
She had two prescriptions for the habit-forming drug from the same doctor — one in her married name and one in her maiden name — but found cutting back started to lead to withdrawal.
After delivering her third daughter, Stadler said, she was taking more than 200 pills per day just to avoid the adverse physical reaction the human body encounters when suddenly deprived of a regular, heavy regimen of opiates.
In pursuit of larger quantities, she turned to Internet pharmacies that would supply painkillers at a premium of up to five times more than what brick-and-mortar pharmacies charged. No identification or doctor’s order was needed — just a credit card.
When that became too expensive, she got a list of Drug Enforcement Agency control numbers used to identify legitimate prescribers. She used her home computer to create prescriptions that she would phone to the pharmacies posing as doctors’ offices.
She’d pay cash for the prescriptions and never showed identification. Stadler, who’s 6-feet-4-inches tall, said she would repeatedly pick up prescriptions under different names from the same pharmacies.
“It almost became like a joke, walking into a pharmacy five times in one day and not getting caught,” Stadler said.
Then she got caught.
The beginning of the end
Eagan pharmacists reported Stadler for trying to pass a forged prescription for 120 tablets of Hydrocodone on July 18, court documents show.
She became suspicious, the pharmacists would tell investigators, when they filled the prescription with Tic Tacs. She left before police arrived.
Eagan police learned that other agencies in several counties were investigating Stadler, according to an Aug. 6 search warrant.
Police seized computers, narcotics and prescription bottles from her home.
But months after authorities searched her home, jailed, charged and released her, Stadler said she continued to forge prescriptions. Realizing her habit was unsustainable, she cut herself off, telling herself that if she died in withdrawal that it was meant to be.
Within days she became violently ill, experiencing hallucinations and refusing food. She was hospitalized at District One Hospital and then treated by a Faribault doctor. Stadler said she has been clean since.
She pleaded guilty in October to fraudulently procuring a controlled substance, a felony. A Dakota County district judge ordered the conviction stayed pending five years probation, which included a $300 fine and 400 hours of community service.
Making good
Eagan Police detective Doug Matteson knows how close Stadler came to the edge. He’s investigated fatal painkiller overdoses, including that of a 33-year-old man found at home, dead and alone.
“He was another Jessica Stadler. He was out getting prescriptions under everybody’s name and visiting doctors all over the metro for back pain. He had too many and he died. That’s a ... shame,” Matteson said.
Stadler offered to come clean in front of pharmacies and law enforcement agencies seeking to curb narcotics abuse. In January, they met with officials at one of the pharmacies that she targeted.
Stadler revealed how she readily obtained the codes to forge prescriptions, what she looked for in a vulnerable pharmacy and how willing some pharmacists were to overlook suspicious activity.
“She pretty much talked for two straight hours,” Matteson said. “We all learned a lot, and as a result we started talking about legislative changes that demands pharmacies talk to each other.”
Matteson said a secure computer network for pharmacies to communicate and track prescriptions would help, as would requiring identification when buying controlled narcotics.
Similar regulations are imposed on pawn shops and scrap yards to curb the fencing of stolen goods.
The detective is now organizing a similar forum for Eagan pharmacists to pick Stadler’s brain, and said he’s happy to see her working on the other side of the law.
“I believe we’ve got Jessica some help,” he said.
— Staff Writer Jim Hammerand may be reached jhammerand@northfieldnews.com or 333-3128. |
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