For 15 years, Walgreens customers in Fremont, Milpitas, and San Jose, California picked up their medications from Kim Thien Le.
Last year, they discovered one of their neighborhood pharmacists wasn’t licensed, yet had been entrusted to handle their medications. The Mercury News reported in January 2019 that California’s pharmacy board was investigating the possibility that the three Walgreens locations had employed someone without a pharmacist license and allowed them to verify and dispense more than 700,000 medications over 15 years.
“According to the pharmacy board’s complaint, 100,701 of those prescriptions were for controlled substances, many verified electronically and remotely. The complaint says the ‘greatest number of verifications had been performed in or for’ the Walgreens at 2600 Mowry Ave. in Fremont. The complaint did not specify how many verifications or where all the 395 stores are located. Walgreens operates at 622 locations in California, and nearly 10,000 across the U.S. and its territories,” the outlet reported at the time.
Le was also accused at the time of signing off on prescription forms that did not meet state requirements to ensure they were not counterfeit or being sold on the black market. At the Fremont store, Le apparently signed off on at least 11 prescriptions that did not meet requirements. The forms were mostly for anti-anxiety prescriptions and some didn’t have the necessary security watermarks to prevent counterfeiting.
Le was employed with Walgreens between 1999 through the fall of 2017, first as a pharmacist intern, and then as a pharmacist, eventually working her way up to the pharmacist-in-charge at different locations.
Le apparently had a pharmacist technician license that expired in 2008. Investigators, however, learned that the license number listed by her name in Walgreens’ records “actually belonged to another licensed pharmacist with a similar name, who was not employed by Walgreens,” The Mercury News reported.
Le was confronted about the discrepancy, and she claimed she had a different license number, which also belonged to a pharmacist with a similar name.
“Walgreens did not have or keep any proof of (Le’s) enrollment in or graduation from an accredited pharmacy school, nor did Walgreens have or keep copies of any of (Le’s) purported licenses,” the complaint against Walgreens said, according to The Mercury News.
The outlet reported on Tuesday that Walgreens “has agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle a consumer protection lawsuit.”
“Consumers depend on pharmacies to make sure that the person behind the counter preparing and giving out medical prescription drugs is trained, competent and licensed to do so,” said Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Tiyen Lin. “Their lives may depend on it.”
The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office also released a statement, saying “Walgreens failed to vet Ms. Le thoroughly when it promoted her to positions requiring a license and failed to make sure that its internal systems were strong enough to prevent an employee from evading them.”
Walgreens has since re-verified the licenses of all its pharmacists nationwide, a spokesman told The Mercury News. Walgreens will also have “to create a verification program, post proof that all of its employees are licensed if their position requires one, conduct annual audits, and submit an annual compliance report to the Alameda County DA’s office,” the outlet reported.