5 days: New Castle former nurse sentenced in federal drug conspiracy
Debra Kay Shaffer’s involvement in a white-collar drug conspiracy earned her less than a week of jailtime.
Under a plea bargain, Shaffer, a 71-year-old New Castle woman, pled guilty to one count of using the DEA Registration number of another for prescribing substances.
An XDEA number is a unique identifier assigned to a medical provider who is approved to prescribe buprenorphine for opioid addition.
In court documents, Shaffer admitted that while she was working as a nurse practitioner for L5 Medical, which operated a chain of pain clinics, she would use the XDEA number of doctors associated the clinics to write prescriptions for Suboxone under their name.
She “regularly” saw opioid addiction patients and doled out prescriptions on days when no one authorized to write prescrip...