They had stolen stamps and red prescriptions from an unsuspecting general practitioner and used them to prescribe drugs to unaware patients, some of whom died, with which they defrauded the national health service of around 500,000 euros. With these accusations, a couple of sixty-year-old pharmacists, husband and wife, respectively owner and collaborator of a pharmacy in Verona, were denounced by the Nas of Padua.
The investigations began in 2013 after a check by the Pharmaceutical Service of the local Ulss on health expenditure which highlighted a suspected overprescription of drugs by a general practitioner. Subsequent investigations by the carabinieri - coordinated by the deputy public prosecutor of Verona, Maria Federica Ormanni - ascertained that the pharmacists, after stealing the stamp and the prescriptions, forged them in the name of the patients in the dark.
The complex forgery mechanism concocted by the pharmacists made it possible to defraud the national health service of around 500,000 euros. The Nas also identified over 5,000 stolen recipes used to prescribe thousands of medicinal specialties for a value of 500,000 euros and seized hundreds of medicines without blanks from the pharmacy. A few days ago, the Carabinieri executed a preventive seizure decree for equivalent - issued by the judge for preliminary investigations of the Court of Verona - on six properties owned by the couple of pharmacists, located in Verona and Bardolino.
