2 NY medical office managers charged as drug traffickers after they took advantage of electronic prescribing to illegally dispense more than 50,000 oxycodone pills

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The Orange County District Attorney’s Office announced on Wednesday the arrest of 18 people in felony drug cases over the past two weeks, including two medical office managers who prosecutors say took advantage of electronic prescribing to illegally dispense more than 50,000 oxycodone pills.

Prosecutors lodged the most serious charges, operating as a major trafficker and second-degree conspiracy, against the two women, J. O’Dell, 38, of the Village of Florida, and V. Hinkley, 40, of Pine Bush. O’Dell was arrested May 23, and bonded out of Orange County Jail on Tuesday after Judge Craig Brown set her bail at $5,000 cash or $20,000 bond. Hinkley surrendered on Tuesday and remains in Orange County Jail.

Prosecutors say Hinkley and O’Dell worked as office managers at BAJA Medical Offices in the Village of Goshen, and that they used the electronic prescribing system, intended to prevent abuse of opioid drugs as part of the state I-STOP program, to generate prescriptions in the names of people who had never been patients at the medical office. They did so using a dongle, an electronic device, to create the prescriptions without alerting other staff.

Prosecutors said the women recruited other people to fill the prescriptions, allowing those people to keep a portion of the pills and turn over the rest to O’Dell and Hinckley. Prosecutors say the women caused 51,375 oxycodone pills to be distributed. The street value of the pills was $625,852, prosecutors estimated.

The doctor who headed the office caught wind of what was happening and went to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office to report the diversion, said Chief Assistant District Attorney Christopher Borek.

Four other people were charged on May 20 with fourth-degree conspiracy, a felony, and released for June 5 dates in Goshen Village Court.

A dozen other people face felony drug charges in two separate sweeps by the Orange County Drug Task Force and its member police agencies.

Jeffery Wanyu-Arenas, 20, of Newburgh, and Kevin Fernandez-Paz, 20, of Wallkill, were charged May 13 with second-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance, a felony; they and Virginia Salinas, 20, of Newburgh were charged with felony drug possession related to cocaine sales in the Village of Monroe.

Charged from May 10-17 with third-degree criminal sale and possession of a controlled substance, felonies, were Zileel Jenkins, 18, Maurice Towles, 31, Rafael Teodoro, 57, and Que’ron Lewter, 17, all of the City of Newburgh; Lavelle Stackhouse, 21, of the Town of Newburgh; Arthur Harris, 39, and Tara Beach, 43, of Middletown; and Paul Marin, 26, of Maybrook. Police issued an arrest warrant on those charges for Darnell Wright, 28.