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State board revokes Valley man’s pharmacy license
If the revocation is upheld, the Boardman man can never be a pharmacist again in Ohio.
COLUMBUS — The Ohio State Board of Pharmacy has permanently revoked the pharmacy license of Gary Evankovich, the Boardman man charged in a long-distance Internet prescription scheme.
It was a unanimous 5-0 vote among the board members voting Wednesday after a four-day hearing before the board.
“They found him guilty of filling prescriptions without adhering to his corresponding responsibility to ensure that there was a valid doctor-patient relationship and that the prescriptions were for a legitimate medical purpose,” said Tracy Greuel, the assistant Ohio attorney general who presented the case against Evankovich to the board.
The Internet scheme involved more than 15,000 prescriptions and more than 1 million doses of medication, Greuel said.
Board member Brian M. Joyce of Girard removed himself from the case because he knows Evankovich. Another member couldn’t vote because he didn’t attend the entire hearing. The board president votes only in case of a tie, and one position on the nine-member board is vacant.
Once the board’s written order of revocation comes out in about a month, Evankovich will be barred from filling prescriptions, and he will have 30 days to appeal the revocation to Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
If the revocation is sustained on appeal, Evankovich, 54, of Devonshire Drive, can never again be a pharmacist in Ohio, Greuel said. Evankovich, an owner of North Lima and Bel-Park pharmacies, was first licensed as a pharmacist in August 1978.
In a criminal case in Mahoning County involving the Internet scheme, Evankovich was indicted in January on 24 counts of sale of dangerous drugs.
Judge Lou A. D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court dismissed the indictment on the grounds that the law under which Evankovich was charged specifically states that it does not apply to state-licensed pharmacists.
However, Martin P. Desmond, an assistant county prosecutor who is appealing the dismissal, said Evankovich “cannot avail himself of that exemption because his conduct was outside the scope of how pharmacists are supposed to conduct their business.”
The illegal drug orders were alleged to have originated in the Caribbean via the Internet, and the prescriptions were written by a New York physician and sent to Evankovich via the Internet, according to Robert E. Bush Jr., chief of the criminal division of the county prosecutor’s office.
Ohio law prohibits physicians from prescribing drugs for patients they haven’t seen, Bush said. Evankovich illegally filled prescriptions in cases in which he knew or should have known that the physician didn’t see the patient for whom the drugs were being prescribed, Bush said.
Among the drugs Evankovich was charged with dispensing illegally in large quantities are Fioricet, a strong narcotic pain reliever and relaxant; Tramadol, a narcoticlike pain reliever; and Soma, a muscle relaxer.