Worker who gave Kentucky residents illegal prescriptions at Chicago clinic sentenced
A Chicago resident who illegally helped people from Kentucky get pain pills and methadone has been sentenced to two years in federal prison.
Judith Harskey, 56, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and methadone, according to the court record.
Harskey was a receptionist at the Midwest Physician Pain Center in Chicago.
Beginning in 2019 and continuing to November 2022, “numerous” people from Perry County, in Eastern Kentucky, routinely traveled to the business, where they paid cash for prescriptions without seeing a doctor, according Harskey’s plea agreement.
A doctor signed blank prescriptions and Harkey filled them in, her plea agreement said.
A cooperating witness took an undercover officer from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to the office, and Harskey later gave the officer prescriptions for drugs for the witness when he wasn’t even there.
When the DEA searched the office in November 2022 agents found 541 pre-signed prescriptions, according to the court record.
There were no details in Harskey’s plea about the doctor who was signing the prescriptions to be filled in later.
U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom sentenced Harskey Nov. 12 in federal court in London.
