Incidentcase156

Desiree Ulibarri, 31, of Albuquerque, N.M., pled guilty in federal court to federal prescription opioid conspiracy charges under a plea agreement that recommends that she be sentenced to a term of imprisonment not to exceed 57 months followed by a term of supervised release to be determined by the court. At the time Ulibarri committed the crimes to which she pleaded guilty, she was a registered nurse employed by an Albuquerque-area hospice care provider.

Ulibarri and co-defendant Annabel Debari, 36, also of Albuquerque, were charged in August 2016, in a two-count indictment with conspiracy to distribute oxycodone, and conspiracy to acquire and obtain oxycodone by fraud and deceit. According to the indictment, the two women committed the crimes in Bernalillo County, N.M., between April 2016 and July 2016.

The investigation of this case began on July 21, 2016, after Ulibarri’s employer, a hospice care provider, contacted DEA to report suspicions that Ulibarri was engaged in prescription pill diversion. The employer became suspicious because Ulibarri was documenting patients’ prescriptions in a way that made it difficult to reconcile the medications and because Ulibarri was picking up patients’ prescription pills at Federal Express instead of having the medication delivered to the patients.

On July 22, 2016, DEA agents seized 80 10-mg oxycodone pills from Ulibarri, which she obtained from packages she retrieved from Federal Express. When DEA agents conducted a consensual search of Ulibarri’s cellular phone, they allegedly found evidence that Ulibarri had been conspiring with a co-worker, who is also a registered nurse, to illegally distribute prescription pills since April 2016. Additionally, a review of records of missing packages revealed that at least 3,870 pills, an aggregate of 42,150 mgs of oxycodone, had been diverted during the course of the conspiracy.

Ulibarri pled guilty to the indictment. In her plea agreement, Ulibarri admitted that she was a registered nurse in March 2016, when she was hired by a hospice care provider, and in April 2016, she began to abuse her position to divert prescription medications from their intended recipients. She acknowledged that she recommended oxycodone prescriptions for patients who did not need oxycodone with the intention of selling the pills to others. Ulibarri admitted arranging for a courier service to hold packages of oxycodone intended for patients for pickup instead of delivering the medication to the patients, and picking up the medication herself so she could divert the oxycodone for distribution and her own personal use. Ulibarri also admitted recommending that her employer hire Debari, who was also a registered nurse, so that Debari could assist her in diverting and distributing oxycodone pills in New Mexico.

Debari entered a guilty plea to similar charges on Dec. 9, 2016. In entering her guilty plea, Debari admitted that she personally diverted at least 750 10-milligram oxycodone pills in furtherance of Ulibarri’s diversion scheme. As part of that scheme, on June 7, 2016, Ulibarri called the courier service and pretended to be the intended recipient of the oxycodone pills, and requested that the courier service release the medication to Debari. Debari also admitted that on July 18, 2016, she helped Ulibarri conceal their diversion scheme from their employer by arranging for another person to call their employer and falsely claim to be an employee of the courier service who was reporting that the oxycodone pills had gone missing.