Richards faces drug prescription fraud charges

A local woman faces TennCare fraud charges after she allegedly used the Magness Library computer to make fraudulent drug prescriptions.

The suspect, Melody Richards, was bound over to the grand jury this week on several felony counts of TennCare fraud and forgery for her alleged passing of fake prescriptions at Wal-Mart and Stewart’s Pharmacy over the past month.

According to investigators, Richards used the computer at the downtown library to make the fake prescriptions which were based on real ones made by a local doctor. She then printed the prescriptions, using her own name and forging the doctor’s authorization, and took them to the various pharmacies where she passed them for Loritab.

The TennCare fraud charges come because she allegedly paid for the forged prescriptions using her husband’s TennCare card.

Her arrest is the third arrest for TennCare fraud made here in just over a month. The prior cases also involved signing for forged prescriptions and putting them on someone’s TennCare tab.

The fact some doctors’ offices are using regular looking computer printouts to write prescriptions is disturbing to some lawmen who say it makes it easier for persons to forge such documents since the computer printouts are so standardized.