27-year-old Indian-origin pharmacy employee convicted in illegal opioid scheme in US

NEW YORK: A 27-year-old Indian-origin man has been convicted for conspiring to distribute an opioid pain medication outside the usual course of professional practice and without any legal medical purpose.

Anmol Singh Kamra of Philadelphia, a pharmacy technician conspired with George Fisher, a physician, and Frank Brown, both charged separately, to illegally distribute thousands of oxycodone pills to people suffering from addiction.

From about December 2012 through about March 2016, Kamra, Fisher, and Brown carried out a scheme to turn the pharmacy into a "pill mill" in which Kamra knowingly filled fake oxycodone prescriptions written by Fisher in sham "patient" names, and gave the oxycodone pills to Brown to sell in street-level drug deals, United States Attorney William McSwain said.

Kamra would sell drugs without a prescription and then ask Fisher to backdate a fake prescription in an attempt to cover the tracks. At trial, Kamra testified that this backdating of prescriptions was a mere "courtesy" on behalf of the doctor so patients could receive their prescriptions in a timely manner, but undercover video evidence showed otherwise.

The small pharmacy Kamra worked, sold so many opioids that some were hidden under the sink for fear that their distributor would notice the over-abundance and cut them off for exceeding the allowable limit. "Kamra was operating nothing more than a corrupt pill mill," McSwain said.

"The misuse of opioids is killing our citizens, and this defendant significantly contributed to our region's crippling opioid epidemic," adding that everything possible must be done to stop the illegal distribution of these deadly drugs, especially by professionals entrusted to prescribe and monitor their use."

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