EAST ORANGE, N.J. (WCBS 880) — A former pharmacy technician at a New Jersey Veteran Affairs hospital stole more than $8.2 million worth of prescription HIV medication from the facility, federal prosecutors alleged Wednesday.
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey, Lisa Hoffman, 48, has been charged with theft of medical products from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in East Orange.
Prosecutors say Hoffman was tasked with ordering medications and other supplies for the center’s outpatient pharmacy while employed at the facility.
Officials allege she used her position to order large batches of HIV medication for the center and then pocketed the drugs to distribute elsewhere between August 2017 and November 2019.
Surveillance cameras posted showed the 48-year-old “regularly taking dozens of bottles of HIV medications from the shelves of the outpatient pharmacy, placing them in a white mail bin, and ten transferring the medications from the mail bin to her bag,” according to prosecutors.
Hoffman is accused of selling the stolen drugs to a Lyndhurst resident named Wagner Checonolasco, the press release said.
Prosecutors says Checonolasco then resold the medications to others. He has already been charged with conspiracy to steal government property.
If convicted, Hoffman could face up to 20 years in prison.