Ex-druggist Yogesh Patel can’t explain nearly $1M opioid theft

Yogesh Patel, a 47-year-old former Woodstock, Ont. pharmacist, stole nearly 3,000 fentanyl patches and 1,500 hydromorphone tablets, with a street value of nearly $1 million, from the pharmacy where he worked.

Patel admitted that between 2013 and 2016 he forged documents, defrauded and stole prescription narcotics from Rexall and the Ontario Drug Benefit Plan, and possessed fentanyl, hydromorphone, and morphine for the purpose of trafficking. The ex-pharmacist used people’s real names, fictitious names, and the names of the dead and dying from local obituaries or a hospice to forge documents to about 150 prescriptions.

In testimony Monday, OPP Det. Const. Christopher Aujer said the prescription systems, set to change soon, rely on honest pharmacists or dispensers to make sure frauds are not committed. Patel was the narcotics signer, or the only one who could authorize narcotics at the pharmacy, and acted as “the gatekeeper for checks and balances.”

“At this point, there is no direct way to check unless we get told someone is creating frauds,” he said. He explained fentanyl, which is 100 times more powerful than morphine, if taken improperly can cause an overdose that could “result in hospitalization and death.”

Aujer said the 3,000 fentanyl patches, if cut into four pieces, had the potential for 12,000 doses — enough to overdose about 30 per cent of Woodstock’s population. Patel will be sentenced Sept. 19.