A woman posed as a pharmacist and allegedly filled more than 700,000 prescriptions while working at three Walgreens locations in the Bay Area for more than 10 years, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Five things to know:
1. California state pharmacy inspectors were first alerted to Kim T. Le in 2017 after a routine inspection at a Walgreens retail store in Fremont, Calif., according to a complaint filed with the state attorney general's office in October 2018. The Walgreens pharmacy had reportedly dispensed medication without fully meeting state requirements.
2. Investigators spoke with Ms. Le and discovered the two pharmacist license numbers she provided belonged to two other pharmacists with the same name but who were not employed by Walgreens. Officials discovered Ms. Le had a pharmacist technician license, but that it had expired in 2008. Ms. Le claimed she received her pharmacy degree from Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., but the school does not have a record of her, the complaint states.
3. Walgreens records showed that Ms. Le began working for the company as a cashier in September 1999 and began working as a pharmacy technician and intern pharmacist two years later. In 2006, she began working as pharmacist for the company, the complaint states. A Walgreens spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times Ms. Le's employment with the company ended in October 2017.
"Upon learning of this issue, we undertook a re-verification of the licenses of all our pharmacists nationwide to ensure that this was an isolated incident," the spokesperson said.
4. State investigators alleged that Ms. Le unlawfully filled 745,355 prescriptions between November 2006 and September 2017. More than 100,000 of those prescriptions were for controlled substances.
5. The California Board of Pharmacy will determine whether the three Walgreens locations Ms. Le practiced at should have their licenses suspended or revoked. A hearing date for the claims against Ms. Le and the three Walgreens locations has not been scheduled, a spokesperson for the state pharmacy board told the publication.
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