Pharmacist Pleads Guilty to Illegally Dispensing Prescription Painkillers

Leonard “Lenny” Stefanelli, the former pharmacist-in-charge of West Orange Pharmacy, West Orange, NJ, admitted to illegally dispensing hundreds of tablets of OxyContin^® and for submitting fraudulent bills to health care benefit providers over the course of two decades. According to a press release from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, Stefanelli sold hundreds of OxyContin tablets to an individual without a prescription in exchange for large sums of cash. For example, he sold two 100-count bottles of OxyContin (one with 30 mg tablets, the other with 15 mg tablets) for $1,800. Stefanelli also conspired with two other people to submit nearly $1 million in fraudulent bills to health care benefit providers, including Medicare and Medicaid between 1992 and 2012. Stefanelli will forfeit $1.5 million in profits obtained from the schemes, and may face up to 20 years in federal prison and an additional fee of $1 million.