Madera pharmacist sentenced for selling nearly 500K opiate pills. How the scheme happened
A pharmacist who had a practice in Madera was sentenced to more than seven years in prison this week for selling opioids for cash, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Ifeanyi Vincent Ntukogu, 49, of Fresno, pleaded guilty in June to distributing more than 450,000 oxycodone and hydrocodone pills based on fraudulent prescriptions, prosecutors said Monday in a news release.
“This defendant displayed a blatant disregard for public safety and the law,” U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert said in a statement.
Ntukogu owned and operated New Life Pharmacy in Madera, which shuttered after his arrest. His attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.
The scheme involved forged prescriptions attributed to more than 10 other doctors, prosecutors said, as part of a plan with co-conspirators, Kelo White and Donald Pierre.
Ntukogu reviewed each prescription between December 2014 and November 2018 and rejected the ones he believed regulators would find suspicious, prosecutors said.
He required cash payments from co-conspirators White and Pierre, who illegally sold the pills in Tennessee, Texas and elsewhere, prosecutors said.
Pierre was previously convicted and sentenced to nine years and four months in prison, according to the DOJ.
White is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 24, and faces a statutory maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
