▲ Fake prescriptions for medical narcotics uncovered by the Gangnam Police Station
Medical staff at a dermatology clinic in Gangnam, Seoul, have been caught distributing approximately 120,000 medical narcotic pills and using them themselves by utilizing over 4,000 fake prescriptions.
The Seoul Gangnam Police Station announced today (July 9) that they have apprehended and referred 13 suspects involved in the abuse of psychotropic drugs, which implicated both a dermatology clinic and a pharmacy in Gangnam-gu, to the prosecution at the end of last month.
Following the arrest of the clinic director, identified as A, and a physician, B, on June 25, police also referred other individuals to the prosecution without detention, including pharmacists who sold drugs based on fake or inadequate prescriptions and pharmacy staff who acted as intermediaries between the hospital and the pharmacy.
Director A and physician B are accused of becoming addicted to sleeping pill-type psychotropic drugs and fabricating 4,331 prescriptions using the personal information of approximately 3,400 foreign patients between March of last year and early this year to purchase the drugs.
Investigations revealed that they requested staff at a large pharmacy in Seoul to supply them with 121,849 psychotropic pills.
They are also accused of stealing propofol from the hospital safe and administering it to themselves after they were unable to consume more of the sleeping medication due to side effects from excessive intake.
The pharmacists who supplied the sleeping pills and other drugs were found to have dispensed the medication without verifying the authenticity of the prescriptions, despite the fact that a large volume of prescriptions under other people's names were submitted with inadequate information.
Circumstances were also uncovered where some drugs were sold in large quantities at prices higher than the market rate, even without any prescriptions at all.
The police confirmed the charges against the medical staff and pharmacists after a six-month investigation that began early this year, following a report from a foreigner whose identity had been stolen to obtain psychotropic drug prescriptions.
An official from the Gangnam Police Station stated, "Purchasing and administering psychotropic drugs under another person's name is a serious criminal act," adding, "We will continue our investigation into the overall distribution of medical narcotics and do our best to ensure there are no further cases of abuse."
(Photo courtesy of Gangnam Police Station, Yonhap News)
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