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A suburban Boca Raton woman is facing fraud charges after police say she allegedly forged her employer’s prescriptions so often that the pharmacy technicians knew her personally.
Joy Widener, 51, bonded out of the Palm Beach County Jail Wednesday night after her arrest on two counts of prescription fraud, and one count each of organized scheme to defraud and practicing medicine without a medical license.
According to a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office report, Widener’s former employer, a dentist in suburban Boca Raton, called police on May 12 to report Widener after discovering that she had been forging his name on prescriptions for a muscle relaxer called Soma for at least a year and a half. He learned of the forgery when a pharmacy in Broward County called for a prescription verification.
The dentist then discovered that Widener had been filing prescriptions under his name since 2009 at a local CVS Pharmacy in the 7000 block of Beracasa Way in suburban Boca Raton, the report stated. A pharmacy technician told investigators on May 17 that the pharmacy’s staff is so familiar with Widener that she even brings them food.
The technician also said Widener had been a regular customer for “several years”, and that she frequented the pharmacy as often as twice a month to fill 60-count prescriptions for Soma.
The report stated that a prescription profile from the pharmacy revealed that Widener visited the pharmacy multiple times from Jan. 10 through April 11 of this year. The profile also said that from January through December 2010, she filled numerous prescriptions for Soma and at least three times for Hydrocodone.
Widener has been arrested twice since 2002 for medical fraud, according to jail records. In 2007, she pleaded guilty to prescription fraud, but a judge withheld formal finding of guilt. She was placed on probation for 18 months, and subject to random drug testing at her expense.