East Coast Ring Steals Rx Sheets From Trash

A network of savvy East Coast thieves has been sending people to rummage through garbage cans near pharmacies to retrieve drug information sheets, reports The News Journal of Wilmington, Del.

Typically stapled to bags containing the prescription bottles, the sheets are designed to guide customers on proper dosages of medicine, as well as restrictions. While many people just throw these materials away after picking up a prescription, thieves can use information they contain — patient names, addresses, doctor’s name and even Social Security numbers — to call in fraudulent prescriptions.


Over the past seven years, agents from the state’s Office of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs have arrested more than 1,100 people involved in 2,110 different felony cases involving prescription drugs, according to The News Journal.

Bruce DiVincenzio, the department’s chief agent, tells the newspaper that thieves are sent from neighboring states to “pillage from trash cans.” They can use the information to phone in prescription refills – often for painkillers like Oxycontin and Vicodin — and charge them to the patient’s insurance company.

"They collect the pills from a number of pharmacies and sell it back to a wholesaler, who sells them at 50 cents to $1 a milligram," he said.


Pharmacies are getting wise. Some of them take extra precautions by checking customers’ identification. CVS and Happy Harry’s (the Walgreens-owned chain that operates 76 stores in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey), have placed signs at trash cans urging people not to throw away their info sheets.

“These informational sheets should be treated with the same sensitivity as one would treat their bank statement,” state police Senior Cpl. Jeff Whitmarsh is quoted.

Medical identity theft doesn’t get as much attention as the more common financial identity theft, but if someone steals a patient’s information in order to gain free medical services or prescriptions, the activity could be reflected in the consumer’s medical records and cause serious problems when they seek their own prescriptions or other treatments.