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A Pike County woman has pleaded guilty in federal court to being involved in diverting opioid medication while working as a travel nurse in West Virginia.
According to a statement from the office of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia Will Thompson, on Dec. 11, Jacqueline Brewster, 54, of Belfry, pleaded guilty to a charge of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud and wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information.
Brewster, the statement said, is scheduled to be sentenced on April 4 and faces a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison, a maximum of three years of supervised release after and a $500,000 fine.
According to court documents and statements made in court, Brewster admitted that she unlawfully accessed and used individually identifiable health information of patients at Raleigh General Hospital in Beckley to divert hydromorphone, an opioid, for her personal use. Brewster was employed as a travel nurse at Raleigh General Hospital from September 2021 until February 2022.
To carry out her diversion scheme, Brewster accessed automated controlled substance dispensing machines at Raleigh General Hospital using her personal biometrics and began the process for checking out hydromorphone purportedly for a patient. Once the machine’s drawer opened, Brewster siphoned off a portion of hydromorphone from its vial, diluted the remaining hydromorphone with another substance so the vial would appear full, reattached the cap and returned the vial to the machine drawer. She subsequently canceled the transaction, the statement said.
Brewster, the statement said, admitted that on one occasion she unlawfully accessed individually identifiable health information and obtained a hydromorphone by fraud occurred on or about Feb. 1, 2022, at Raleigh General Hospital.
Brewster, the statement said, further admitted that she carried out her scheme and diverted hydromorphone many times over the course of her employment at Raleigh General Hospital, and that she siphoned the hydromorphone not for any legitimate use.
Thompson made the announcement and commended the investigative work of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration–Office of Criminal Investigations (FDA-OCI) Metro Washington Field Office, and the valuable assistance provided by detectives from the West Virginia State Police and the Kentucky State Police.
United States Magistrate Judge Omar J. Aboulhosn presided over the hearing. Assistant United States Attorney Owen Reynolds is prosecuting the case.