PHILADELPHIA — The longtime owner of a Northeast Philadelphia pharmacy that once prescribed more OxyContin than any drug store in the country has been sentenced to prison and ordered to pay more than $4 million to settle claims of defrauding the government.
Mitchell Spivack, 63, of Collegeville, was sentenced to three years and six months in prison, two years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $451,328 restitution and to forfeit $116,000.
United States District Court Judge Harvey Bartle III on Tuesday also ordered that Spivack and the business he owned for 30 years, Verree Pharmacy in Fox Chase, must pay the $4.1 million under the Controlled Substances Act, False Claims Act. They are banned from ever dispensing controlled substances.
In October of 2019 Spivack was investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration after the agency received reports of an unusually large volume of OxyContin orders coming into the pharmacy at 7960 Verree Road.
A Philadelphia Inquirer analysis of government data in December 2019 noted how the pharmacy had at one point ordered more OxyContin than any other U.S. pharmacy. When Purdue Pharma in 2010 changed the formula so the pills couldn’t not be crushed, keeping users from snorting or injecting the drug, the store’s OxyContin sales quickly plummeted by half.
A news release from U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero said the pharmacy “filled prescriptions for wholesale quantities of high-dose oxycodone despite obvious alterations to the prescriptions and other red flags indicating that the drugs were not for a legitimate medical purpose.”
As opioid use became epidemic, the pharmacy had established itself as a “no questions asked” business for prescriptions for oxycodone and other addictive drugs, the release noted. By 2016, Verree was “the largest purchaser of oxycodone among retail pharmacies in the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
“Pharmacies and pharmacists engage in the deepest violation of the community’s trust when they exploit their access to opioids and other controlled substances and illegally dispense the drugs for their own financial gain,” Romero said.
The Verree Road pharmacy has a new name and is under new ownership.
Spivack pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and health care fraud in June after a joint investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the state office of attorney general.
From 2013 to 2019, the pharmacy also defrauded Medicare and other insurance companies of more than $450,000 by submitting fake health care claims, federal prosecutors alleged. Spivack and others would label the claims “BBDF” — an acronym for “Bill But Don’t Fill.”
Spivak’s actions added “fuel to the fire of a crisis that kills 14 Pennsylvanians every day,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who joined more than two dozen states in suing Purdue Pharma.
“Nothing will bring back the lives we’ve lost to this epidemic, but today’s sentence holds Spivack, and Verree pharmacy, accountable for their actions.”
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