Arizona Doc Gets Prison for Illegal Sale and Possession of Prescription Drugs
Friday, March 19th, 2010Yet another doctor has had a run-in with the law but this one went further than just having a few too many patients on prescription painkillers or overmedicating someone who eventually succumbed to a drug overdose. Lawrence Carl Runke, 66, of Arizona decided to take his pharmaceutical knowledge and apply it to an illegal pharmacy. For his trouble, he got himself five years in prison and four years of probation.
The Charges: Illegal Painkiller Prescriptions
Runke was found guilty of 12 criminal counts. These included charges like money laundering, sale of prescription drugs, possession of prescription drugs for sale and possession of dangerous drugs for sale as well as conspiracy.
Where did Runke get the drugs to fill the prescriptions at his illegal pharmacy? The same place many Americans go to get their illegal painkillers when they can’t get a legal prescription in the United States: India. The way prosecutors tell it, Runke purchased drugs for his pharmacy, Global Medicines, LLC, from unapproved Indian suppliers and then resold them here.
Runke’s medical license was suspended long ago and he was never licensed as a pharmacist in Arizona. This is what originally started the investigation in 2005. Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations and the Phoenix Police Department worked together on this one and found that Runke’s little business was potentially creating serious health problems for his clients.
The risks that Runke took with patients’ health certainly wasn’t hurting his bank account: he generated over $1.5 million dollars since 2005.
Arizona and Illegal Prescription Painkillers
Arizona, it seems, is a new hotbed for these illegal pharmacies. With the spate of busts recently that close down illegal pharmacies, Arizona is making quite a name for itself.
Another Arizona doc, Dr. Albert Szu Yun Yeh, was shut down last year with 14 felony counts for opening a clinic (only on Tuesdays) that managed to fill 100 prescriptions weekly for drugs like OxyContin, Percocet and Vicodin. He wrote the prescriptions, in some cases, without even seeing the patient and refilled them without checkups; both of these actions are practices that violate the Controlled Substances Act when opiate painkillers are in question.
Fighting Prescription Drug Fraud in Arizona
Due to the many arrests and illicit pharmacies recently as well as the fact that 50 percent of people entering drug rehab are doing so for prescription drug addiction, law enforcement has been working harder than ever to fight the problem. They have built a statewide database to track painkiller and stimulant prescriptions that are often abused, making it more difficult for an individual to receive multiple prescriptions for the same or similar drugs from different doctors and even harder for doctors to prescribe copious amounts of addictive drugs to hundreds of patients.
Databases have worked to limit prescription drug fraud in some states and is a good preventative measure, but it’s not enough to eradicate the problem of prescription drug addiction. Drug rehab for prescription drug addiction is the only way to break free if you have been struggling with painkiller or stimulant addiction. Call now for more information.


