The former head of pharmacy services at Washington’s St. Elizabeths Hospital is expected to plead guilty Wednesday to stealing prescription drugs from the hospital with the intent of reselling them, according to officials.
Raymond Jackson and his wife, Brenda, a pharmacist at a Temple Hills Kaiser Permanente facility, arealleged to have run a pharmaceutical sales business, called Jackson Pharmaceutical Services, from their Waldorf, Md., home. Brenda Jackson was sentenced to six months in prison Friday for stealing prescription drugs from the Prince George’s Kaiser Permanente pharmacy where she worked and reselling them to convenience stores in the county. She also agreed to repay $85,000.
In October 2006, Brenda Jackson was caught on tape removing pharmaceutical drugs from the Kaiser Permanente building in Temple Hills, according to police charging documents. Authorities say Jackson gathered bottles of non-narcotic prescription drugs used to treat everything from high cholesterol to HIV into a cloth bag, which she then snuck out of the building. She was arrested by Prince George’s police in October 2006, as she left work. A search of the property turned up nearly $150,000 in prescription drugs in crates throughout the home.
“According to court documents … there were pill bottles, computer systems and pill labels seized from her home that are believed to have been used to resell the drugs,” Ramon Korionoff, spokesman for Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey, told The Examiner.
Raymond Jackson, who was once on the surgeon general’s policy advisory council, came under suspicion when police discovered that some of the drugs found inthe couple’s home were anti-psychotic medications not sold at the Kaiser Permanente facility.
His attorney, Allen Dale, said Brenda Jackson functioned as more of a “ringleader” in the scheme. “This doesn’t mean he didn’t break the law, because he did,” Dale said. “But I think his wife was the more culpable of the two.”
