Operation Wasted Daze — Calvary, Remcare, Beco, Brandy, Ethel's Pharmacies
Outcome
46 of 49 defendants convicted in $18 million pill mill scheme; five pharmacists from independent pharmacies sentenced for filling hundreds of illegal opioid and benzodiazepine prescriptions for up to $800 per fill.
Details
Operation Wasted Daze — Fort Worth Multi-Pharmacy Pill Mill (2017–2021)
Outcome: 46 of 49 defendants charged in "Operation Wasted Daze" were convicted in an $18 million pill mill scheme; five independent pharmacists operating Calvary Pharmacy, Remcare Pharmacy, Beco Pharmacy, Brandy Pharmacy, and Ethel's Pharmacy were among those convicted for filling hundreds of illegal controlled substance prescriptions for $200–$800 per fill.
In September 2020, the DEA's Fort Worth Tactical Diversion Squad arrested 40 of 49 defendants charged in connection with "Operation Wasted Daze," an investigation into an $18 million pill mill scheme operating in Fort Worth, Texas. The operation involved two physicians — Dr. Caesar Mark Capistrano, 61, and Dr. Tameka Lachelle Noel, 36 — who wrote prescriptions for hydrocodone, oxycodone, alprazolam, carisoprodol, zolpidem, phentermine, and promethazine with codeine, knowing the drugs would be diverted to the streets for illicit use.
Five pharmacists operating independent pharmacies were central participants in the scheme. Wilkinson Oloyede Thomas operated Calvary Pharmacy; Christopher Kalejaiye Ajayi operated Remcare Pharmacy; Bartholomew Anny Akubukwe operated Beco Pharmacy; Nedal Helmi Naser operated Brandy Pharmacy; and Ethel Oyekunle-Bubu operated Ethel's Pharmacy. These pharmacists charged criminal recruiters between $200 and $800 per prescription, filling hundreds and hundreds of prescriptions for a fee.
Defendant recruiters would identify patients — in some cases using homeless individuals as patients — and bring them to the physicians' offices where they received prescriptions written without legitimate medical evaluation. The prescriptions were then routed to participating pharmacies for cash payment. By March 2021, 46 of the 49 defendants had been convicted. The case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas.
Primary Source: DEA Press Release — 46 Convicted in $18 Million Pill Mill Scheme in Fort Worth (Mar. 24, 2021)
How Crucible Prevents This
Five separate independent pharmacies were simultaneously operating as pill mills in the same metropolitan area, all serving the same criminal prescription network. Crucible's prescriber overlap detection and inter-pharmacy dispensing pattern controls would have flagged the shared-prescriber and shared-patient networks across locations, creating the kind of aggregate signal that individual pharmacy-level controls miss.
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