Two Local Women Convicted in $7 Million Charity Drug Theft Scam

Two Middlesex County women admitted in court that they defrauded a charity program out of more than $7 million in donated medicine by using their positions as customer service reps to divert the medications to addresses they had access to, said U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman in a statement.

Keisha Jackson, 47, of Perth Amboy and Jameshia Bryant, 26, of South River, pleaded guilty Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Mary L. Cooper in Trenton federal court to charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Jackson and Bryant were previously charged in June.

A third defendant, Lateefah McKenzie Body, 34, of Linden has also been charged in the case. 

According to court records, a pharmaceutical company had donated millions of dollars worth of FDA-approved prescription medicines for the treatment of HIV and cancer at no cost to impoverished patients.

Jackson, Bryant, and McKenzie Body had been employed as customer service representatives at a corporation that administered the donated medicines program by sending the drugs to the patients' physicians for their treatment.

Instead of having the drugs sent to needy patients, court records said that McKenzie Body entered approximately 600 fraudulent orders to have the medications delivered to Jackson’s home and other addresses controlled by those involved in the scheme. 

The medications were resold at a profit, court records alleged.

After the administering company discharged McKenzie Body, Bryant kept up the scam by entering yet another 950 fraudulent orders, again being sent to Jackson's home and other addresses where they conspirators could pick the drugs up for resale.

Jackson and Bryant face 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense. Both are scheduled to be sentenced in February, 2013. 

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