Local Pharmacist Sentenced For Selling 500,000 Opiate Pills

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Nov. 26, 2024 – Ifeanyi Vincent Ntukogu, 49, of Fresno, pleaded guilty to distributing more than 450,000 oxycodone and hydrocodone pills based on fraudulent prescriptions, prosecutors said Monday in a news release. “This defendant displayed a blatant disregard for public safety and the law,” U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert said in a statement.

Ntukogu owned and operated New Life Pharmacy in Madera, which shuttered after his arrest. His attorney could not immediately be reached for comment. The scheme involved forged prescriptions attributed to more than 10 other doctors, prosecutors said, as part of a plan with co-conspirators, Kelo White and Donald Pierre. Ntukogu reviewed each prescription between December 2014 and November 2018 and rejected the ones he believed regulators would find suspicious, prosecutors said. He required cash payments from co-conspirators White and Pierre, who illegally sold the pills in Tennessee, Texas and elsewhere, prosecutors said.