PHILADELPHIA PA – A Collegeville pharmacist has been sentenced to 3-1/2 years in prison, two years of supervised release, must pay $451,328 in restitution, and will forfeit $116,000 under a United States District Court judicial ruling issued Tuesday (Oct. 4, 2022).
The sentence was imposed by Judge Harvey Bartle III on Mitchell Spivack, 63, for conspiracy to distribute controlled substances – said to be oxycodone and “other dangerous and addictive opioid drugs” – and healthcare fraud. The charges resulted from an investigation between the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General.
Spivack was initially charged in June, and in the same month pleaded guilty to a criminal information naming these offenses, according to United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero.
According to charging documents, Spivack owned Verree Pharmacy, a small neighborhood pharmacy located in the Fox Chase section of Philadelphia. He was the pharmacist-in-charge there for more than 30 years. Over that time, Romero contended, Spivack and co-conspirators allegedly cultivated Verree’s reputation as a “no-questions-asked” pharmacy for oxycodone and other opioids.
By 2016, prosecutors said, Verree was the largest purchaser of oxycodone among retail pharmacies in the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It also filled prescriptions for wholesale quantities of high-dose oxycodone, despite “obvious alterations to the prescriptions and...
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