Hempstead man sentenced for diverting prescription pills to illicit market 

A Hempstead man, who orchestrated a two-year conspiracy to divert hundreds of prescription pills from a Nassau County pharmacy onto the illicit market, was sentenced Wednesday to 8 years in prison, federal officials said.

Trevor Lawry, 38, pleaded guilty in January 2023 in federal court in Central Islip to the sole count of the indictment — conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute oxycodone, Adderall, Xanax and promethazine with codeine syrup. Prosecutors had been seeking a sentence of 12 years.

“While communities across the country reeled from an opioid epidemic, this defendant operated an elaborate scheme that illegally diverted huge quantities of prescription medications into the hands of drug users, including people struggling with addiction,” said Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. 

Anthony La Pinta, Lawry's Hauppauge-based defense attorney, said he was confident his client “will continue his commitment to recovery and avail himself to all available treatment programs while serving the remainder of his sentence.”

Between February 2018 and March 2020, Lawry, working with an unidentified pharmacist from D’s Pharmacy in Hempstead, presented dozens of forged paper prescriptions — purportedly issued by a Bronx-based physician — to obtain large quantities of drugs. 

“These prescriptions followed a discernible pattern: they were issued on paper prescription forms bearing sequential or closely related serial numbers (an indication they were sourced from stolen prescription pads) and purported to prescribe the four controlled substances,” according to the government's sentencing memo. “ … The insider filled the prescriptions and dispensed the drugs, which Lawry and his associates then sold at street level.”

During the more than two years, 529 fraudulent prescriptions on 109 unique dates, involving nearly a kilogram of the four controlled substances, were distributed to Lawry, prosecutors said. The drugs, prosecutors said, were resold on Lawry's social media pages.

The unidentified Bronx doctor, when questioned by investigators about the suspicious number of prescriptions, denied issuing them, the sentencing memo indicates.

The scheme, prosecutors said, continued when Lawry was incarcerated on an unrelated charge of criminal possession of a forged instrument at the Nassau County Correctional Center.

Lawry, authorities said, continued to direct the activities of his co-conspirators from inside the jail.

Within two days of his release from jail, Lawry continued to fill the bogus prescriptions — at one point posting on Instagram an image of dozens of Xanax pills on display.

As law enforcement attempted to arrest Lawry on Nov. 12, 2022, he fled from officers, traversing neighboring yards and jumping a fence before he was located hiding behind a bush on a neighbor’s property, prosecutors said.

“For two years, Lawry spearheaded a diverted prescription drug trafficking conspiracy using forged prescriptions, putting profits above public health,” said Frank Tarentino, special agent in charge of the DEA New York Division.

In 2014, Lawry was arrested for a similar scheme, filling a forged prescription at a Valley Stream Rite Aid pharmacy. When police arrested Lawry, he was found in possession of two small bags of methamphetamines and marijuana, officials said.

Lawry has multiple other previous arrests and convictions for criminal possession of a controlled substance, criminal sale of a controlled substance, disorderly conduct, aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, unlawful possession of marijuana and false personation.

“Simply stated, for the last approximately 15 years, Lawry has engaged in near constant criminal activity,” the sentencing memo states.

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.