Prescription Fraud

Prescription fraud charges may result from modifying the quantity of a legitimate prescription, stealing a doctor’s prescription pad and forging prescriptions, creating a counterfeit prescription pad and forging prescriptions or receiving a legal prescription by misrepresentation or deceit. Prescription fraud is often associated with drug abuse and/or addiction.

Another form of prescription fraud is committed by doctors and other medical professionals authorized to write prescriptions notwithstanding misrepresentation or deceit. Medical professionals commit prescription fraud when they write prescriptions for controlled substances that are not issued for legitimate medical purposes, and are not issued according to the usual courses of their professional practices.

Prescription fraud, in any form, can be charged as either a misdemeanor or a felony, at the prosecutor’s discretion. Misdemeanor prescription fraud is punishable by up to one year in county jail. Felony prescription fraud carries a potential jail sentence of 16 months, two years or three years.

Any medical professional convicted of prescription fraud is likely to lose his/her licensure.

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Examples of Defenses Against

Prescription Fraud Unlike the majority of drug charges, prescription fraud is often looked upon with an element of sympathy as it often involves people who are experiencing misfortunes and have become addicted to drugs. Moreover, there are a number of robust defense strategies against prescription fraud charges against those who fraudulently write or give prescriptions.

It is also possible that your doctor gave you a prescription too quickly or without asking the necessary questions. That would be negligence, not fraud.

Walk Free Law can also argue that you did not knowingly prescribe a controlled substance for a non-legitimate purpose. It may be the case that a patient obtained a prescription for a controlled substance that turned out not to serve a legitimate medical purpose. However, this does not mean that the practitioner who wrote the prescription committed fraud under Health & Safety Code 11153. The general principle of the law is that a practitioner must be “reckless” in prescribing a drug to a patient; mistakes alone are not sufficient to make one criminally culpable.

For those who received the fraudulently prescribed drugs, our firm can argue on your behalf that you did not use fraud or deceit to obtain a prescription because, unless you actually lied to or concealed a material fact from your doctor, you are not culpable of prescription fraud. In addition to this, you may have a problem with abusing prescription drugs. There are so many layers to drug addiction. You may even have been obtaining these drugs to treat both pain and another medical condition.

Although cases of entrapment of practitioners are rare, it can be a viable defense under certain circumstances. For example, an undercover police officer offers a ludicrously high fee to a doctor or nurse to write an unnecessary [and illegal] prescription. The doctor in question was having financial troubles and the offer was enough to induce him/her to accept a bribe that he/she otherwise would not have done. But remember, if the practitioner was predisposed to prescription fraud, even if the offense originated with law enforcement, entrapment will not be a defense.