Ex-Postal Worker Sentenced for Drug Theft
PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative file photo. Prescription medications move through the Department of Veterans Affairs Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy in North Charleston, South Carolina. A former postal employee was sentenced Monday after prosecutors said she targeted VA prescription packages, stole veterans’ narcotics and replaced them with over the counter pills before returning the packages to the mail stream. (Department of Veterans Affairs photo)
A former U.S. Postal Service employee who deliberately targeted Department of Veterans Affairs prescription packages, stole narcotic medication and replaced it with over the counter pills has been sentenced to one year in federal prison.
Carrie Wallace, 48, was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Judge Dale A. Drozd after pleading guilty to tampering with a consumer product and mail theft by a postal employee.
Federal prosecutors said Wallace used her position with the Postal Service to identify packages containing prescription medication and other products.
She specifically targeted packages sent by the Department of Veterans Affairs because she knew they commonly contained narcotic medications.
Wallace would cut open the packages, open the prescription bottles and remove the narcotics inside.
She then replaced the stolen medication with over the counter pills.
After making the substitution, prosecutors said she retaped the packages and returned them to the mail stream so they would continue to the veterans who were supposed to receive the original prescriptions.
The scheme did not stop with missing medication.
Multiple veterans actually received the tampered packages and consumed the replacement pills believing they were taking the medication prescribed to them.
According to the Justice Department, the affected veterans experienced extreme pain, increased agitation, anger and other mental health symptoms after their medication was stolen and replaced.
Court records said Wallace acted with reckless disregard for the risk that another person could suffer death or bodily injury from the tampering.
The conduct stretched beyond a single package.
According to a sentencing memorandum described in local reporting, Wallace’s attorneys said she stole pain medication approximately 32 times over a period of about five years.
Her defense said she suffered from chronic pain and opioid addiction and stole the medications for her own use rather than selling them for profit.
The defense had asked the judge for probation, including home detention, mental health treatment and either employment or community service requirements.
Instead, Wallace was sentenced to one year in federal prison.
Her attorneys said the federal sentencing guideline range calculated in the case was 51 to 63 months.
The tampering charge itself carried a possible maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, while mail theft by a postal employee carried a maximum of five years.
The Justice Department did not explain in its sentencing announcement why the final sentence was substantially lower than the guideline range cited by the defense.
Wallace had previously worked at the U.S. Postal Service in Placerville, California.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General and the Department of Veterans Affairs Police Department.
The Postal Service inspector general separately confirmed Wallace’s guilty plea earlier this year and said she intentionally targeted VA packages because of the narcotic prescriptions they contained.
The case highlights a particularly dangerous form of mail theft because the veterans did not simply lose their prescriptions.
The packages were resealed and delivered after the medication inside had been changed.
That meant veterans could take the substituted pills without knowing their prescribed narcotics had been removed.
Wallace will now serve one year in federal prison for the scheme.
(Source: OAF Nation)
