New York: Hospital Worker Sentenced to Jail for Forging AIDS-Drug Prescriptions

A former employee of Montefiore Medical Center received up to five years in prison Monday for forging AIDS drug prescriptions and selling the drugs on the black market. Enrique Rojas, an HIV education coordinator at the Bronx hospital, was sentenced and ordered to pay more than $1.7 million in restitution, said New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Rojas, of Bronxville, N.Y., pleaded guilty to grand larceny in the first degree in July. Rojas had faxed hundreds of forged prescriptions for the drug Serostim to out-of-state pharmacies for a nine-month period, Spitzer's office said. Believing the prescriptions to be legitimate, the pharmacies then filled them, sent the drug to addresses Rojas provided, and billed Medicaid, which reimbursed providers $6,300 for a month's supply of Serostim. Rojas admitted to selling Serostim on the black market. Spitzer said a month's supply of the drug carries a street value of $3,000-$3,200.

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