A McAlester pharmacist was charged with several felonies after allegedly fraudulently using several medical professionals’ registration numbers without their permission to write prescriptions.
Court records show John Clayton Hardy, 66, of McAlester, was charged with unlawful distribution of controlled dangerous substance, furnish false or fraudulent material, unlawful manufacturing of false prescription, falsely personate another to create liability, and violation of computer act.
Records show Hardy was booked and released from the Pittsburg County Jail after a judge granted a bond on his own recognizance.
A probable cause affidavit filed in the case states the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control began the investigation into Hardy after a woman was denied a renewal for a registrant number from the agency due to “recent activity on her prescription monitoring program” although her registrant number was inactive for two years.
The woman told the investigator the pharmacy told her Hardy used her number to sell two prescriptions of pseudoephedrine to employees who were sick, the affidavit states. A pharmacist at the pharmacy then told the woman they took the prescription off her number and onto another instead.
According to the affidavit, Hardy called the woman and left a voicemail in April 2022 apologizing for using her registrant number “and that he did not realize it was not active” before admitting he filled the two prescriptions for employees.
Investigators wrote in the report they spoke with a doctor who said he did not write or authorize five prescriptions for pseudoephedrine that were written with two not being patients of the doctor.
During an interview with Hardy, the man told investigators he used the woman’s registrant number twice because his employees were sick and claimed both the woman and the doctor gave him verbal permission to use their names on prescriptions “approximately 10 years ago.”
Agents also spoke with a physician’s assistant who investigators said had a handwritten prescription filled at Hardy’s pharmacy, the report states. The PA told the agents he did not write or authorize the prescription, the affidavit states.
“There has been six prescriptions written/electronically prescribed for pseudoephedrine within the past three years” by John Hardy “that doctors did not authorize, write, or have any record of” between April 2020 and March 2022, the affidavit states.
Tags: Arrests Pharmacy Crime Pseudoephedrine Rx Fraud
