Calgary pharmacist charged after 33,000 pills stolen gets conditional sentence

A pharmacist charged with stealing more than 33,000 narcotics pills from the Safeway pharmacy in Okotoks, Alta., has been given a fine and conditional sentences.

Okotoks RCMP laid the charges in December 2017against Leanne Rogalsky,including fraud, theft, breach of trust and trafficking in a controlled substance.

The Mounties allege she created fake patient records and then used fake prescriptions under those patients' names to take the narcotics from the pharmacy.

The offences are alleged to have occurred between Aug. 1, 2012, and Oct. 13, 2017.

She was convicted of six charges, resulting in a $3,000 fine for the charge of selling drugs outside of a pharmacy; a conditional sentence of two years less a day on the four possession charges; and another conditional sentence of 18 months for the charge of using a forged document.

• Calgary pharmacist charged with stealing 33,000 pills was suspended for similar incidents decade ago

Rogalsky had been disciplined a decade earlier after even larger quantities of narcotics went missing from a Shoppers Drug Mart in Calgary and a Pharmasave in Canmore.

In 2008, Rogalsky admitted to a host of allegations brought against her by the Alberta College of Pharmacists with respect to missing drugs at two pharmacies where she worked in 2003 and 2004.

39,733 pills missing from Shoppers in 2003

In a written decision,the licensing body for pharmacists said 39,733 tablets of narcotics "were dispensed pursuant to prescriptions that did not exist" from the Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacy at Shawnessy Towne Centre, which Rogalsky owned up until December 2003.

An investigation by Shoppers Drug Mart "showed that this volume of narcotics had been ordered and could not be accounted for," reads the college's written decision.

The decision also notedthat Rogalsky was "alone at the pharmacy" when many of the narcotics went missing including Demerol, Oxycocet, Ativanand Dexedrine and she was "not able to provide any explanation" for the missing drugs or altered inventory records.

"The losses encountered by Shoppers Drug Mart at this store stopped after [Rogalsky] resigned in December 2003 and have not occurred since," it adds.

8,000 pills missing from Pharmasavein 2004

The decision goes on to say that Rogalsky took a job at a Canmore Pharmasave in June 2004 and, shortly after she started work, "much larger orders of narcotics were made than had been made in the past."

About 8,000 tablets of narcotics then went missing between June and September.

Criminal trial and suspension

The college's decision also refers to a 2005 criminal trial.

Court records indicate Rogalsky had faced two counts of theft under $5,000 in 2005, but those charges were dismissed in 2007.

It was on Oct. 7, 2008, that Rogalsky was brought before the hearing tribunal of the Alberta College of Pharmacists and admitted to the allegations surrounding her work at the Calgary Shoppers Drug Mart and Canmore Pharmasave.

In response, the college suspended her registration for four years, with a retroactive start date of Nov. 1, 2004. (She had alreadyreceived an interim suspension that began on Nov. 9, 2004.)

Rogalsky was also orderedto pay a fine of $2,500 as well as the costs of the investigation and hearing.

Once the suspension expired, she was ordered to follow a host of conditions in order to resume practising, including to submit to random drug tests and to "not act as a licensee or as signing authority for narcotics or controlled drugs" for a period of three years.

As a condition of reinstatement, the college also ordered that "she will make the licensee of any pharmacy in which she works aware of these orders for a period of 36 months."

In an email, the Alberta College of Pharmacists said in 2017 thatRogalsky"satisfied the sanctions and conditions of her suspension" and was reinstated asa registeredpharmacist in 2009.

Rogalskywas again removed from the college's registry of clinical pharmacists onOct. 20, 2017, in light of the new charges.