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When DEA agents showed up at the Neighborhood Health Center in Riverside to ask about J. Marks, health center officials showed them an official DEA letter praising the nurse practitioner.

Investigators say the letter and the DEA seal at the top are both fake.

They claim Marks used the fraudulent correspondence to hide the illegal prescriptions she was writing for herself.

It was a scheme, according to federal prosecutors, that began with her stealing the identities of her patients and using them to write at least 18 illegal prescriptions, usually for oxycodone.

“Marks later admitted that she had used the identities of six patients to obtain controlled substances,” a DEA agent said in court papers.

The nurse practitioner is the latest in a growing number of health professionals who are facing criminal charges because of their own addictions or personal use of opioids.

Jeffrey T. Bagley, an assistant federal public defender, would not comment on the allegations against his client. Marks was arraigned Friday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah J. McCarthy and released on conditions.

The prosecution, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Misha A. Coulson, claims Marks would submit the fake prescriptions to a pharmacy – she used several in the Southtowns – with the instructions that the patient’s daughter, stepdaughter or granddaughter would pick them up.

She would show up instead, according to prosecutors.

In court papers, DEA agents said Marks was interviewed in April of last year and at first denied the allegations against her.

Later, when she was shown surveillance photos and videos of her picking up the prescriptions, she admitted stealing the patient identities and using them to obtain controlled substances, agents said.

They said she also admitted creating the fake DEA letter in an effort to portray herself in a favorable light with her new employer.

The case against Marks is rooted in a complaint from a pharmacist at the Wegmans pharmacy in West Seneca and a prescription for Adderall. Investigators said the complaint led to an internal investigation by Neighborhood Health Center and then Mark’s termination.

“As soon as we found out there was an investigation, we were supportive of it,” the center said in a statement Friday.

Indicted in December, Marks is charged with obtaining controlled substances by fraud, identity theft and fraudulent use of a government seal.