GOSHEN – A Goshen woman pled guilty before Orange County Court Judge Craig Stephen Brown on Tuesday to attempted operating as a major drug trafficker.
Jodee O’Dell, 38, was engaged in a scheme to obtain oxycodone pills to sell by creating false prescriptions from the Goshen medical practice where she worked as office manager, and having accomplices, who were not patients of the practice, fill the prescriptions and give the majority of them to her and other accomplices.
After receiving a complaint from the medical practice, Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler’s Office began an investigation into a group of people allegedly involved in a conspiracy to illegally obtain oxycodone by electronically issuing false prescriptions for the highly addicted narcotic drug.
As a result of the investigation, six defendants, including O’Dell, were charged with felony conspiracy charges.
Felony complaints filed in Goshen Village Court alleged that the group caused 51,375 oxycodone pills with a street value of over $625,852 to be illegally dispensed between January 6, 2015 and August 27, 2018.
She admitted that during the six-months between January 1, 2018 and June 28, 2018, the group caused 11,803 pills containing oxycodone, with a street value of over $182,752 to be illegally dispensed through the false prescriptions.
O’Dell is set to be sentenced in August.
“The large number of pills illegally dispensed from a medical practice in the Village of Goshen demonstrates how the opioid epidemic affects every community in the state without regard to socio-economic status,” Hoovler said. “The abuse of oxycodone has helped fuel the opioid epidemic. Those who believe that it is safe to take oxycodone pills without a doctor’s order, because the pills are created by a pharmaceutical company, rather than being ‘street drugs,’ are tragically mistaken.”
Hoovler said there is “a direct connection between the abuse of opioid pills and the abuse of heroin and the frequently lethal fentanyl that is often sold with it.”
