SARASOTA, Fla. — Police say a Sarasota veterinarian is in custody after she picked up prescriptions for herself in one of her patient’s names.
Sarasota Police Department officers satisfied an arrest warrant for Dr. Melissa Page, a doctor of veterinary medicine and owner of Coastal Veterinary Internal Medicine located at 3530 Fruitville Road in Sarasota. Page allegedly filled several prescriptions for one of her former business partner’s pets and used them for herself.
Detectives received a complaint from the former business partner, who had a dog named Peppie in Page’s care, claiming that she filled a prescription for Peppie without him knowing. The man, who also started working at the practice in January, happened to find a prescription bottle for a potent opioid for moderate to severe chronic pain on her desk with Peppie’s name on it, according to the arrest warrant.
That’s when the man contacted Walgreens and later found out Dr. Page reportedly filled two additional prescriptions in Peppie’s name.
The warrant says the man found out his contact information was switched out with hers, allowing her to receive notifications about when the prescriptions were ready for pickup. Detectives determined the amount of medicine that was prescribed was “not medically necessary for her patient” even though the man’s dog did suffer from a chronic illness.
The man reportedly confronted Page about the prescriptions and told officials that she started acting erratically, getting upset and refusing to talk to him further.
The manager of the Walgreens pharmacy Page went to also filed a complaint to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, accusing her of “possibly writing fraudulent controlled substance prescriptions for her patients, dogs and cats," dropping them off and picking them up at the end of the day. The manager told officials she thought her behavior was suspicious because of the type of prescriptions Page wanted to be filled.
Page was arrested and charged with two counts of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud. She was also charged with possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia at the time of her arrest.