The former owner and operator of a Grosse Pointe Park pharmacy will be sentenced after a federal jury convicted her of providing fraudulent prescriptions for controlled substances over several years for more than $640,000, federal prosecutors said.
Hasna Bashir Iwas, 62, of New Baltimore, who owned and operated the former Beacon Point Pharmacy, was convicted last week in U.S. District Court in Detroit of 26 counts of conspiracy and unlawful distribution of controlled substances for prescription drugs.
Sentencing is scheduled for February 20. Iwas’s bail was revoked and she was remanded in custody pending sentencing, according to court records and a Monday release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit.
Prosecutors said the crimes occurred between 2013 and 2018. They said I regularly received false prescriptions for medications given to her by one or two people.
Dead patients and unlabeled prescription bottles
In all, 1,291 fraudulent prescriptions were filled out in the names of more than 50 different “patients” — some of whom were dead, in prison or never entered the pharmacy, according to the release.
I received over $640,000 in cash for filling bogus prescriptions. Io initially insisted that every patient was present at the pharmacy when the fraudulent prescriptions were filled, but evidence at trial showed otherwise, prosecutors said.
They said video evidence showed that I was distributing controlled drugs to pill dealers/counterfeiters in prescription bottles without the required labeling. Pills could not be returned to the pharmacy when they were sold on the street without a label containing the name of the pharmacy, patient, strength of medication, quantity and directions for use, according to the release.
I mentioned that I tore off the labels that should have been on the bottles.
Prosecutors said an audit of the pharmacy showed a “massive shortage” of controlled substances at the pharmacy. More than 70,000 dose units of oxycodone and more than 36,000 dose units of oxycodone. Xanax They were purchased and delivered to the pharmacy and were not dispensed under any prescription, according to the release.
more: 4 Metro Detroit Doctors Charged $41 Million in Opioid Scheme
the US Attorney’s Office The charges against Ewas were announced in 2021 when the grand jury indictment was unsealed. That statement said the indictment added Iwas to previous indictments that charged others, including a doctor who pleaded guilty but died of natural causes before sentencing, with running a drug ring in Detroit, Grosse Pointe Park, River Rouge and elsewhere.
Orville Greene, Special Agent in Charge US Drug Enforcement AdministrationThe Detroit field office said Ewa “misused her pharmacy license to enrich herself and, in doing so, intentionally fueled the deadly opioid epidemic currently sweeping our nation.”
Contact Christina Hall: chall@freepress.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @challreporter.
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This article originally appeared on the Detroit Free Press: A federal jury convicts a Grosse Pointe Park pharmacist of filling false prescriptions
