Doctor Charged in Connection with Ill-gotten Pain Pills
State, Store Records Mark Trail of Illegal Pharmacological Shopping-Spree
ALBANY, N.Y. — The conversation between upstate doctor Myra Mabry and her girlfriend, recorded by DEA agents in November 2017, seems to corroborate other evidence of their unlawful pill-popping alliance — and how far they went to conceal it, according to court papers.
“You didn’t lie on the stand,” Mabry’s old girlfriend told her, according to a DEA affidavit. “I went to the federal grand jury and lied for you. I told the story you came up with, I followed the story we planned.”
“We came up with,” Mabry stressed to the woman, who is identified as “S.B.” in court papers. “You can’t blame me for that. We came up with it together. (S.B.), we’re both equally guilty.”
That remains to be seen, because Mabry, 49, has been charged with distributing controlled substances outside the course of professional practice for no legitimate medical purpose — and S.B. is now a cooperating witness against her. Between May 2015 and June 2017, Mabry allegedly wrote nearly 100 phony oxycodone and hydromorphone prescriptions in the names of two people — one of whom was a former patient and colleague of her girlfriend, according to the affidavit.
Mabry, an osteopath and obstetrician-gynocologist, could face up to 20 years in prison and a maximum $1 million fine if convicted, court records and prosecutors said. Before she decided to cooperate with law-enforcement officials, Mabry’s girlfriend was her partner in the crime, which involved phony medical records, lies to federal authorities, bogus blackmail testimony and promised hush money, court documents allege.
As of July 12, 2018, Mabry was still licensed to practice in New York state, according to the state office of professions (click here for Mabry’s license info).
The street names of oxycodone include “hillbilly heroin,” “kicker,” “OC,” “ox,” “oxy,” “perc,” and “roxy,” according to the DEA. Hydromorphone is referred to as “D,” “dillies,” “dust,” “footballs,” “juice” and “smack.”
Suspicious Prescriptions
The investigation of Mabry and her girlfriend began sometime before August 2017, when Mabry’s former patient learned through her primary doctor that Mabry had written 51 prescriptions of oxycodone in her name, the affidavit said. Price Chopper store pharmacies in Catskill and Leeds, N.Y. filled the perscriptions, according to store and New York State Health Department Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement records.
The former patient told investigators that she’d only seen Mabry once — for a routine pregnancy check up — and that Mabry had never prescribed medications for her. Furthermore, Price Chopper pharmacists reviewed a photo array and identified Mabry’s girlfriend as the person who had pretended to be the patient in order to pick up the oxycodone prescriptions.
The patient also told investigators that she’d confronted Mabry’s girlfriend about the bogus prescriptions, the affidavit states. The girlfriend apologized to the woman for using her identity, saying they’d decided to use her name because “she and Mabry wanted the oxycodone.”
Digging further into records from the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and the clinic where Mabry practiced, investigators discovered that she’d written 44 oxycodone and hydromorphone prescriptions in the name of a second person, and that the Green Medical Arts Pharmacy in Catskill, N.Y. had filled the prescriptions. Pharmacists there told investigators that Mabry had picked up the prescriptions.
A second person told investigators that Mabry had never prescribed medications to her — or even treated her. What’s more, investigators found that the clinic had no patient file for the second person, and that Mabry had “taken steps to make it appear, in the medical clinic’s computer system, that the prescriptions had been issued erroneously,” the affidavit said.
Blackmail Story Unravels
Quizzed by investigators in early August 2017, Mabry admitted to writing the bogus prescriptions, picking up the drugs and giving them to her girlfriend, the affidavit states. However, Mabry also claimed that her girlfriend had blackmailed her into the scheme by threatening to tell Mabry’s husband about their affair.
“Initially, S.B. echoed this story and told investigators, as well as a federal grand jury, that she had blackmailed Mabry,” the affidavit states. However, S.B. later rolled on Mabry, and admitted that she’d picked up the oxycodone prescriptions and shared some of the medication with Mabry, according to court documents.
S.B. also recanted her blackmail admission. In a sworn statement and testimony to the same grand jury, S.B. said that “after Mabry spoke with the DEA, she and Mabry agreed that S.B. would lie, to protect Mabry, and in exchange, Mabry would provide money to S.B.”
This led to the taped conversation and Mabry’s arrest on March 9. Several days later, the court ordered her to participate in a High-Impact Incarceration Program (HIPP), a military-style intervention program.
Though Mabry began HIPP at the Jamesville Correctional Facility on March 22, court documents don’t specify if she completed the program or not. Mabry’s case is pending in federal court here, but the court released her after she agreed to nearly a dozen conditions, including compliance with random drug testing, travel restrictions and substance-abuse counseling.
Story originally posted on www.empirecrime.com
