Forged prescriptions —
not so easy anymore
Tom Ortega, a member of the state pharmacy board that passed a law requiring identification from those picking up drugs for other people. [Photo by Daniel Zollinger / Independent]

By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana, heroin and all the other street drugs are available to those who want to buy them. Now people are attempting to forge prescriptions in order to get legal drugs, said Randy Matilla, a local pharmacist.

Michelle Florene Roan, 34, of a post office box in Chambers, Ariz., used at least two different names in pharmacies in Grants and Gallup to get Lortabs, a synthetic narcotic. She was arrested at Wal-Mart in Grants just as she completed a transaction on Jan. 16, where she received the prescription drugs. Matilla called Grants police after contacting the state pharmacy board investigator Bill Weast, in Albuquerque, and told him the prescription was forged. He said he had contacted the doctor in Flagstaff, Ariz., whose prescription pad sheet the drugs were written on and was told it was a forgery, he said.

Recognizable

The week before this incident in Grants, Matilla was talking to Charlene Chavez, a pharmacist at Walgreens in Gallup, and was told about the possibility of forged prescriptions for this woman, he said. Chavez said

Walgreens sees about one attempted forged prescription a month. Matilla said he sees at least one a week. When Roan came in to the Wal-Mart pharmacy, he recognized her, but realized she had used a different name. He said he checked the computer database and found where she had picked up the same narcotics twice before. The computer showed him two different driver licenses, both with different names.

New law

As of Jan. 1 a law took effect, originated by the state pharmacy board, requiring anyone who picks up drugs for another person to present a government issued photo identification, such as a driver license or a state ID card.

Tom Ortega, a pharmacist at Trust Pharmacy in Grants, is on the state pharmacy board that enacted this law.

“We are a small pharmacy here in Grants, I know everyone who comes in,” Ortega said.

“If I don’t know them, or if they have a prescription from an out-of-state doctor, I contact the doctor’s office to see if it is good,” he said. The reason Roan probably selected Wal-Mart to try to get the drugs is it is located right next to Interstate 40 and is accessible to all the traffic and is very busy, Ortega said. That comment was echoed by Bruce Smith, the pharmacist at Parkhurst Pharmacy, the other retail pharmacy in Grants.

“It’s not too big a deal here (at Parkhurst),” he said.

Since the first of the year, however, Weast said people trying to pick up prescriptions for other people has dropped by 70 percent, all because of the requirement to show identification. In Albuquerque alone, West said he investigates between 60 to 100 forged prescriptions a month. It is bad all along the Rio Grande corridor in New Mexico and Texas, he said. The new state law has made a significant dent in that situation, though, he said.
“It has really, really helped,” he said.

The forgery charge is a felony, and Roan may have also committed forgery on prescriptions in Arizona, said Grants Police Detective Moses Marquez.

“This is not the first arrest like this that we have made,” he said. “We get a handful of arrests a year in this area. Most people either get cold feet and leave or get their prescriptions and have left by the time we have been called and get there,” he said. In this instance, police arrived and were standing just behind Roan when she received her prescription. She was arrested on the spot.

To contact reporter Jim Tiffin call (505) 287-2197 or e-mail: jtiffin.independent@yahoo.com