It’s far from the first time drug prescribers were caught with their hands in the Greek cookie jar. Last year alone, there were numerous instances:
- A doctor and two pharmaceutical executives were arrested in March for filing fake prescriptions and prescribing medicines from a company for kickbacks. They were charged with everything from bribery to violation of immigration laws.
- A large conspiracy resulted in the arrest of 16 people—including public health doctors, pharmacists and others—for scamming Greece’s National Organization for Healthcare Services by writing fake prescriptions. The gangsters in question were filling prescriptions written out to foreigners who were incarcerated or who had left the country, and reselling the prescriptions obtained, collecting all the profits. Many of the drugs were narcotics or psychotropics, and over 90,000 fake prescriptions were written and filled. Eight felony charges resulted and the successful scam financially damaged the Greek government to the tune of €3.5 million.
- A Greek doctor was arrested in September for leading a phony prescription ring, which he kept all in the family. The man wrote an astonishing 3,679 prescriptions, with 69 going to his mother, 56 to his father, 31 to his wife, 18 to his son and 12 to his daughter—and it was all for the same drug!
Greece’s mental health industry boasts a long history of such deception. A clampdown at state-funded mental health clinics in 2014, for example, revealed over $30 million worth of fraud.
Whether he wears a black hoodie or a white lab coat, a drug pusher is a drug pusher.
