Woman Who Ran Multimillion Dollar Pill Mill in Deer Park Sentenced

A nurse practitioner convicted in June of conspiracy and the criminal sale of prescriptions arising from her role in a multimillion dollar pill mill in Deer Park was sentenced to nine to 19 years in prison on Tuesday.

Ingrid Gordon-Patterson, as a licensed nurse practitioner and registered DEA prescriber wrote more than 1,200 prescriptions for 30 milligram oxycodone tablets over a yearlong period of operating a pain management clinic at 207 Bay Shore Road in Deer Park, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said.

Spota had recommended that Gordon-Patterson, 49, be given the maximum sentence of up to 26 years in state prison.

“She is a drug dealer who sold prescriptions for a powerful habit-forming narcotic for cash,” Spota said, citing evidence presented at a five-week long trial that Gordon-Patterson diverted over 400,000 oxycodone tablets with a street value in 2012 of over $6 million.

“She used a pen and prescription pad to make enormous sums of cash over the span of one year, an estimated $1 million paid to her by addicts and dealers who resold the oxycodone pills,” Spota said.

Gordon-Patterson was indicted three years ago by special grand jury that the DA empaneled to investigate prescription drug diversion and abuse locally.

The grand jury reported that Suffolk County had almost twice the state average in cash prescriptions paid for oxycodone and the spike in arrests and overdose deaths locally were due to two factors, Spota said: the overprescribing of painkillers and the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on lawmakers and physicians.

On June 29, a jury in Riverhead found Gordon-Patterson guilty of all counts in the indictment; two counts of conspiracy, two counts of criminal sale of a prescription and one charge of criminal possession of a weapon. The gun was a loaded, .38-caliber Titan Tiger revolver found by detectives in a metal cabinet in Gordon-Patterson personal office, Spota said.