March 14, 2015

FAIRBANKS, AK — 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.

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.