PHARMACIST STEVE

Three sides to every story – yours, mine & the truth

2 Responses

1. 

   Peon, on March 6, 2013 at 11:16 pm said:

   Here is a bit more information than what is seen in the video…..

   From http://www.desmoinesregister.com:

   The owner of a landmark Des Moines pharmacy raised the possibility that someone else working at his store ordered hundreds of thousands of narcotics, then distributed them without his knowledge.

   “I’m thinking somebody’s got access to my credit card. I think it’s somebody inside my store. And I think somebody’s got access and takes my stuff, yes I do,” Mark Graziano, owner of Bauder Pharmacy, told the Iowa Board of Pharmacy. “I don’t have an idea who it is, and I can’t prove that.”

   Graziano’s pharmacy license was suspended last year after investigators raided his small, Ingersoll Avenue store. Authorities say records show pharmaceutical suppliers sent Bauder’s nearly 700,000 more hydrocodone pills than the store distributed legally over about two years.

   Graziano, who is the store’s majority owner and was its lead pharmacist. He testified today in the second day of a hearing to determine whether the state should return his license.

   Graziano co-owns the store with his sister, pharmacist Kim Robertson. He said a state investigator instructed her to sign a pile of unsigned invoices for past deliveries of the drugs. He said the state board now is using those documents as evidence that they received the shipments of drugs. Instead, he suggested the unsigned invoices, which were kept in a locked box, could represent shipments that someone else in the store ordered and received without the owners’ knowledge.

   Graziano often flashed looks of incredulity at the board and its lawyer for the allegations against him. He angrily blamed a board investigator for his lack of records of what happened at his store.

   “The board shredded my documents!” he declared. He said he used to keep many years’ worth of records in the basement. He said a board official told him he should shred any records that were more than two years old, so he hired a shredding service to get rid of them. The shredding might have accidentally included three months’ worth of more recent records, he said, making it impossible for him to defend himself against allegations that nearly 700,000 doses of addictive narcotics were missing from the small, west-side store.

   State authorities raided the store last year, suspended Graziano’s license and ordered the store not to dispense addictive drugs.

   At one point, the administrative law judge overseeing the hearing urged Graziano to stop asking questions of the state board’s lawyer, who essentially is acting as the prosecutor. “I’m also going to ask you to take a deep breath and settle down,” the judge said. Graziano responded: “It’s my license,” but then he apologized. Later, Graziano’s defense lawyer, Rick Olson, told him to stay in his seat and exhibit “less passion.”

   Graziano made the unusual choice of waiving his right to have the hearing be held in private. He said he wanted the public to see that the allegations are unfair.

   Graziano was asked about Tuesday’s testimony of a former customer, Kirby Small, who said Graziano had supplied him and others inappropriately with pills. Graziano denied Small’s contentions, including that they were close friends. “He said yesterday he hates me. He’s never been my friend,” the pharmacist testified. “…I have had nothing to do with Kirby, besides filling his scripts. Nothing.”

   Graziano noted that the store has been in his family for decades. He said he began working there at age 10, and he and his sister have continued running it as a neighborhood institution, including a widely known ice-cream soda fountain. “We’re what a pharmacy should be,” he said. “People come in because they like it, we’re friendly.” He noted that one of the many state allegations against him is that he failed to wear a name tag. “Why have I been cited twice for not wearing a name badge? Because people know me,” he said.

   Under questioning from a state lawyer, he acknowledged several relatively small violations of pharmacy board rules. But he said the board’s role should be to help pharmacists stay in compliance with the countless regulations, not try to run them out of business.

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2. 

   Peon, on March 6, 2013 at 10:58 pm said:

   That is a weird story! To me, it sounds like the pharmacist is GUILTY. Why would he be buying his drugs through a credit card? And, someone stole his credit card info? The state board inspector had him shred documents that would prove his innocence??? Looks like it would be simple to look at his narcotic books and do an inventory of his narcotics. If they match, he is innocent. If not, he is guilty.

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