Two months after she was indicted for scheming to fake opioid prescriptions, a New Haven home healthcare aide was finally arrested on Friday morning on federal charges.
Still wearing her blue nursing scrubs, the 30-year-old live-in nurse appeared Friday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Spector at the federal courthouse on Church Street on a felony charge that she conspired to distribute oxycodone pills through faked prescriptions.
Federal agents said she was part of a larger drug conspiracy, in which a medical resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital allegedly wrote out prescriptions for painkillers to five people who didn’t need them.
The woman spoke few words during the arraignment. After hearing the charge against her, she pleaded not guilty.
JIm Glaser, the court-appointed defense attorney, asked for her to be released to her mother’s custody. But Judge Spector said that plan left him with “serious concerns.”
Spector said he wasn’t sure he could trust the mother to turn her in, after she’d already been out for two months. And he said he didn’t want to create any problems with her Section 8 apartment.
Spector ultimately released her to the Virginia Wells House, an all-women transitional facility, with a $100,000 bond. He also required her to wear an ankle monitor, abstain from any alcohol or drugs, and avoid any contact with the others charged in this case.
