
By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A worker at a Chelsea orthopedic surgeon's office used the doctor's prescription pads to supply a major oxycodone ring on Staten Island which sold from an ice cream truck, authorities said Thursday.
Office manager Nancy Wilkins, 40, was selling prescription pads she stole from the doctor she worked for on West 14th Street, whose name and specific office address were not given in the charges.
Wilkins allegedly gave gang ringleaders Louis Scala and Joseph Zaffuto, enough sheets to fill 317 fraudulent prescriptions between July 2009 and June 2010. Each pad was sold to the dealers at $100 a piece.
"The surgeon had no idea what his office manager was up to. He too was a victim," Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan said at a press conference Thursday.
"The doctor had no culpability in this instance," Brennan said.
In the bust, 31 people, mostly Staten Island dealers, were arrested and charged with distributing 30 mg pills at an average of $20 each. They sold more than 40,000 tablets in total, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Wilkins, of Brooklyn, acted in concert with the dealers beyond just selling the pads. She made special arrangements with the drug dealers to intercept calls from concerned pharmacists so the surgeon would not get questioned about the prescriptions.
Wilkins was most recently employed at a hospital in Queens. Authorities are investigating whether she was conducting illegal business there.
She was charged with conspiracy, criminal diversion of prescription medications and other offenses.