The U.S. Department of Justice is suing a nurse practitioner in Stockton in connection with a nationwide scheme to sell illegal opioid prescriptions for cash, acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith announced this week.
Joan Rubinger is accused of providing more than 900 illegitimate prescriptions to customers around the country.
The civil complaint alleges that between Nov. 1, 2019, and June 17, 2024, Rubinger went from city to city providing a range of intravenous flushes to prescriptions for controlled substances. The DOJ alleges that no physician supervised Rubinger and that she met her customers in places like hotel rooms.
According to the complaint, Rubinger sold the prescriptions for cash using an encrypted text-messaging system.
“The complaint alleges that Rubinger provided her customers with price lists that invited them to select their own prescriptions from a menu of highly addictive drugs intended to treat a wide variety of medical conditions,” the DOJ alleged in its complaint.
These drugs included Oxycodone, Percocet, Xanax and Adderall, which were meted out without any examination or medical record paper trail, the federal agency said, noting that Rubinger’s prices ranged from $100 to $250 per prescription and she used Venmo to complete the transactions.
Rubinger is also accused of creating multiple prescriptions in the names of customers’ friends and family in order to disguise the amount of drugs she was signing off on, allowing her customers to get the medications under false names.
Her customers either used the drugs themselves or sold them on the street, the DOJ alleges.
Rubinger had a document she called “THE RULES,” which contained specific instructions for each customer that she told them would “minimize the attention we attract from the DEA,” the complaint alleges.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency suspended Rubinger’s authorization to dispense controlled substances in June 2024, according to federal documents.
“Rubinger told customers they were required to pay her for prescriptions in advance because, ‘just like at McDonald’s, you gotta pay for your burger before they hand it to you,’ ” the DOJ said.
The government is asking for civil penalties to be lobbed against Rubinger and that she be barred from dispensing controlled substances.
Stockton nurse faces federal lawsuit in prescription opioid scheme
