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Two Colorado nurses who stole opioids from hospitals in Denver and Greeley were sentenced to prison in federal court.
Judge R. Brooke Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado sentenced Lisa Marie Jones, 43, of Castle Rock, a former employee of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Denver, to fourteen months imprisonment to be followed by three years of supervised release.
Marlene Gilmore, 28, of Wellington, a former employee of Greeley’s North Colorado Medical Center, was sentenced to four months imprisonment to be followed by one year of supervised release, a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver said.
The investigation took place over incidents in 2016 by the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Office of the Inspector General.
According to the court documents, Jones worked at the VA Center in Denver and a free-standing UCHealth ER in 2016. She stole hydromorphone, morphine, and fentanyl from the facilities for personal use, the court alleged. Although she primarily stole “waste” medication after administering opioids to patients, the investigation found she also “tampered with two vials of fentanyl at the emergency facility, removing all of the drug, replacing it with saline, and ‘re-sealing’ the vials with skin glue,” the court found. Jones then returned tampered vials back into the storage for potential use on future patients.
Gilmore was a nurse at North Colorado Medical Center in 2016 when she stole fentanyl, morphine, and hydromorphone from the locked automated medication management system, the court said. Gilmore pleaded guilty to one count of theft of a controlled substance by deception. Evidence showed that she also used drugs while on the job.
“These nurses put their patients at risk so they could get high. For that they will go to prison,” said U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer in a statement. “Patients place enormous trust in their health care providers. Caregivers who betray that trust will pay with their own freedom.”
“We will continue to pursue and bring to justice any healthcare professionals who put their patients’ health at risk by tampering with their pain medications,” said Spence E. Morrison, of the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations.
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