FAIRBANKS -- Over a period of six years, hundreds of prescriptions mailed by Alaska pharmacies to veterans and villagers disappeared while in the custody of the U.S. Postal Service in Fairbanks.
Patients waiting for morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and other drugs often found themselves in agony because their pain medications failed to show up in the mail, Dan Nelson, the supervisor of the pharmacy at the Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center, told Fairbanks Superior Court Judge Michael MacDonald on March 4.
The thefts stopped about a year ago following a sting operation that led to the arrest of a Fairbanks mail processing clerk.
While James Dzimitrowicz Jr., 47, soon found himself facing three felony charges -- one for theft, one for tampering with evidence and one for possession of a controlled substance -- the district attorney's office later agreed to a plea deal in which the former mail clerk would perform 400 hours of community service in one year and be placed on probation with no jail time. Under the agreement, the theft charge would be dismissed and he would admit to possession of a controlled substance. The defense asked for two years of probation, while the state wanted five years.
But MacDonald refused to sign off on the agreement for a suspended imposition of sentence, demanding that the lawyers explain whether the allegations mentioned during Dzimitrowicz' sentencing about years of missing prescriptions should be addressed by the court -- allegations that had not generated criminal charges.
"So the many years of thefts are not charged and the one theft that was charged is to be dismissed here so the defendant is before the court only on a single count of misconduct involving a controlled substance in the fourth degree, is that correct?" the judge asked. The attorneys said that was correct.
Georg Brendel, a special agent for the Postal Service Office of Inspector General, said three previous mail theft investigations of Dzimitrowicz failed to produce charges. He said the criminal case arose from "the most egregious mail theft investigation" that he knows of both for the duration and for its impact, given that the clerk had access to mail intended for more than 60 ZIP codes in the northern half of Alaska.
Brendel said Dzimitrowicz admitted stealing up to three medications a week during 2013 and "sporadically through the previous five years."
In 2012, after a post office theft investigation failed to produce results, the inspector general recommended a "registry-type accountability process when handling future prescription medicine parcels" in the Fairbanks post office. The postal service said the change "should eliminate the loss of future mailings," but the thefts continued for another year and a half.
Brendel said he did not know what federal prosecutors would do now but they had preferred that the state take the lead in bringing charges against Dzimitrowicz.
"At the time we believed the state would be quicker and more aggressive," Brendel said.
"That's appearing to not be the case," MacDonald said.
Brendel agreed.
The judge set another hearing for March 25, saying he wanted details on how the court could take into account the statements about the allegations that have yet to produce criminal charges.
Earlier, prosecutor Sean Skillingstad, filling in for Assistant District Attorney William Spiers, said that given the defendant's lack of a criminal history and his drug dependence, the state believed that requiring community service would give him "an opportunity to get his life back on track."
"He lost everything that he had built in his career with the postal service and is now essentially indigent," Skillingstad said. He said the state believes that 400 hours of community work service in one year would "be of greater societal benefit" than having him in jail.
Nelson, the head of the Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center pharmacy since 2007, said he dealt for years with angry patients who demanded to know why the center had "screwed up" their medications and that the post office had no answers. Getting replacement prescriptions cost tens of thousands of dollars and took a lot of time.
"I was reamed out by hundreds of people," he said.
The missing packages, usually sent by certified mail, came from the Native health center in Fairbanks and from the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to testimony in court. Nelson said his staff spent hundreds of hours dealing with the problem and the only result was that the thefts continued for years.
Dzimitrowicz was confronted on Jan. 24, 2014, after a sting operation at the main Fairbanks post office. Previous investigations had not led to charges regarding missing medicines but 11 complaints from patients in 2013 prompted a new look, Brandel said.
Parcels from the VA containing medications were left in an area controlled by Dzimitrowicz. "He was soon observed stealing one of the parcels," the state charged. "At the end of his shift he drove to the North Pole waste transfer station where he threw the (empty) VA parcel into the Dumpster. He was quickly confronted by law enforcement officers and confessed to stealing medications."
An Air Force veteran, Dzimitrowicz served in the first Gulf War and returned a changed man, his family said. A counselor said he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The theft of medication from someone who is seriously ill is not a victimless crime, said Nelson, the pharmacist.
"His entire six-year crime spree came at great cost to hundreds of patients," Nelson said. "We had patients who were in agonizing pain after major orthopedic surgeries or for diagnoses for terminal cancer." He said he wished that the victims could be present to talk about the pain they suffered by not having their medications.
Dzimitrowicz wrote a letter of apology to the public "to express my sorrow to the vets, patients and people in need of their medication that I've affected." He said he has been sober for a year and is bothered by what he did. He said he brought shame on himself and his family.
"My sincerity is my word to stay clean and prove myself to the public once again so that I can walk among you with my head up," he wrote.