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Ridgewood drug store snared in major oxycodone distribution scheme

The gates were down at Chopin Chemists on Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood Thursday after its owners were indicted on charges that they illegally distributed thousands of oxycodone pills.
RIDGEWOOD TIMES/Photo by Robert Pozarycki

No prescriptions were needed at a Ridgewood pharmacy where thousands of oxycodone pills were illegally sold over the counter, federal prosecutors announced on Thursday.

Chopin Chemists, located on Fresh Pond Road at Palmetto Street, was shuttered Thursday after its owners — Lilian Jakacki (aka Wieckowski), 49, and Marcin Jakacki, 35 — were named in an indictment charging them with dealing more than 500,000 oxycodone pills over a five-year period out of both the Ridgewood shop and another drug store they owned in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

According to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, the Jakackis “were part of one of the largest opioid painkiller diversion schemes ever uncovered in New York,” distributing the highly addictive medication with “obviously fake prescriptions or no prescription at all, helping fuel the growing crisis of prescription pill abuse.”

“Whether it is the corrupt doctor writing unwarranted prescriptions; the greedy pharmacist selling pills based on fake or no prescriptions; or the street-level drug dealer peddling painkillers directly to the addicted, we must confront this escalating epidemic at every level,” Bharara said.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) found, in an audit of the defendants’ Brooklyn store, that it dispensed 400,000 oxycodone pills without prescriptions as of 2013, and that the Chopin pharmacies also accepted more than 1,300 fraudulent prescriptions at both the Brooklyn and Ridgewood stores, releasing an excess of 160,000 pills. In some instances, prosecutors noted, the fraudulent prescriptions were made out to brand names such as “Coach” or “Chanel.”

Between September and October of this year, authorities said, an undercover DEA agent unlawfully purchased hundreds of oxycodone pills  from the Ridgewood location in transactions that Marcin Jakacki allegedly coordinated.

The illegal sales allowed the Jakackis to live the good life, Bharara noted, as they used the illegal proceeds to purchase a $2 million home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

A third individual — Robert Cybulski, 30 — was charged with illegally purchasing tens of thousands of pills from the Brooklyn location, using multiple fraudulent prescriptions to obtain the medication.

Lilian Jakacki was additionally charged in a separate indictment for allegedly swindling more than $750,000 in fraudulent Medicare prescription drug claims filed out of the Brooklyn location between 2010 and 2014.

Each suspect faces up to 20 years behind bars if convicted.