Yes. At least that is the opinion of the California court system and their State Board of Pharmacy.

The case actually dates back to 2006-2008. During that time, pharmacist-in-charge (PIC) Andrew Sternberg was working at a Target pharmacy in San Fernando, California. Under his watch, a pharmacy technician by the name of Imelda Hurtado was involved in stealing more than 200,000 tablets of Norco with a street value of more than $1 million.

The scheme involved Hurtado placing phone orders for Norco from the wholesaler. She did so from home, timing such orders so she would be working when the shipment arrived. Remember, at this time Norco was still just a Schedule III controlled substance and didn't require a DEA 222 form to be executed.

When the order arrived, she managed to successfully destroy the invoice evidence and secretly put the Norco in her purse. Because she was the only one involved in unpacking the order and managing the invoices, her plan went undiscovered for 18 months until Sternberg found one of the bottles of Norco hidden in the pharmacy.

Immediately upon finding the suspicious bottle, Sternberg questioned the other pharmacists and notified Target management. These steps lead to the installation of cameras that helped management and law enforcement discover Hurtado's deceptive plan. She was caught, and in addition to her arrest, Target and Sternberg were cited with negligence, a $100,000 fine, probation and community service.

You can read the details of the case here.

Prior to this situation, the acting PIC had a completely clean record of service, which spanned 30 years from the time of his licensure as a pharmacist in 1978. Sternberg appealed the ruling, claiming there was no negligence on his part. But this appeal was overturned recently, which brought the case back into the attention of the media where I read about it in Drug Topics.

So, was the PIC responsible for, by means of negligent supervision, the criminal actions of this unscrupulous pharmacy technician? This case hits close to home for me — as a pharmacy manager — and raises several important questions and considerations in my own mind.

First, it is obvious the technician was no novice when it comes to deception. She managed to carry out this caper at least 85 times and under the "observation" of at least three different pharmacists (depending on who was working that day). I could see her getting away with it once. Or even twice. But managing to do so 85 times suggests we are dealing with an expert.

Second, this situation definitely exposes a blind spot in the system. It would not be difficult, from a technology standpoint, to expose a large discrepancy between orders for controlled substances and claims (prescriptions) for controlled substances. Pharmacies can certainly do this today. But the fact that this wasn't done allowed this technician to fly under the proverbial radar and place orders for thousands of tablets of Norco that were never dispensed from the pharmacy.

Third, while it might be easy to play the Pharisee and condemn Sternberg for his failure to catch this sooner, I personally won't be picking up that stone. It could happen to any of us. Schedule III-V drugs are not subject to the same rigorous ordering and record-keeping process as those in Schedule II.

In fact, this is undoubtedly what was behind the rescheduling of hydrocodone products to Schedule II back in October 2014. It wasn't so much their addictive capacity and their ease of diversion that drove that transition.

Could it have been caught sooner? Of course. But Sternberg wasn't involved in this scheme, did not profit by it, exposed it promptly when discovered and had an otherwise clean record. I don't blame him, and I sympathize with what he has had to endure because of someone else's crime.

Finally, it is a wakeup call. What could we do better to prevent this in the future where we work? Are we as pharmacists and especially as pharmacy managers guilty of thinking such things couldn't happen where we work?

Sadly this kind of thing happens all the time. And while we are especially focused on providing counseling to patients who need our help, we are also tasked with providing safety and security to the system through which potent and addictive drugs are dispensed.

If we take this as an opportunity for learning, rather than blaming, then even a bad story can have a happy ending.