A Navy doctor has been charged with writing and filling fraudulent prescriptions in other people’s names at a Pentagon drug store, court papers show.
Peter Pressman was arrested last week and faces a preliminary hearing Thursday in federal court in Jacksonville, Fla., on charges of aggravated identity theft.
Several employees of a Defense Department task force told naval investigators that Pressman wrote prescriptions for narcotics in their names and without their knowledge in 2010, according to charging documents filed in federal court in Alexandria.
Most of the prescriptions were for narcotic pain killers and were filled at a CVS pharmacy at the Pentagon under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
Pressman sent an email to one of those employees, identified only as P.B., last October apologizing for what he did, the court records show.
“I am terrified about my poor judgment leading to an accusation of insurance fraud,” the email stated. “I don’t want to dig myself any deeper, but I feel like I’ve got to be proactive to avoid disaster. I apologize for burdening you with this, but if you help me out of this one, I will happily owe you Everything.”
Pressman the next day also apologized to the insurance carrier even though he claimed some of the medicine was being used to help “starving adolescents” in Afghanistan.
A CVS pharmacist told authorities that Pressman often picked up patients’ prescriptions, would always pay patients’ co-pays or pay the cost of the prescription in cash and had on more than one occasion prescribed multiple prescriptions for hundreds of hydrocodone pills to the same patient within a short period.
Pressman is currently assigned to a naval hospital in Jacksonville but is not involved in patient care, Capt. Michael Vernere, executive officer of Naval Hospital Jacksonville, said in a statement.
