Ex-Watertown Police Sgt.: I'm Addicted to Pain Killers

Former Watertown Police Sgt. Joseph Deignan told police he used the false prescriptions becuse he is addicted to pain killers.

Deignan stole a driver’s license of a man pulled over by WPD, and used it to get fake prescriptions for pain medication, according to the affidavit filed by Federal drug enforcement officials.

The eight-page affidavit outlines the investigation into Deignan, who was arrested in Marlborough December for forging a prescription. On March 4 Deignan, of Framingham, was arrested on federal charges of fraud in connection with identification documents and possession of a controlled substance by fraud.

Forged Prescriptions

In November, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Eunice Muniz received a tip from a pharmacist at a CVS in Framingham that someone filed false prescriptions, according to the affidavit. The man used a driver’s license to identify himself and used cash to pay for the prescriptions for hydrocodone bitaratrate, acetaminophen and alprazolam.

The same license was used to get prescriptions at a CVS in Marlborough. The pharmacist recognized the name as one being used to forge prescriptions and contacted the doctors listed as having prescribed the drugs. Both denied that the person whose name is on the driver’s license was their patient, according to the documents.

Other prescriptions were filed using the doctor’s identification numbers using two other names.

At least one of the doctors practices in Watertown, according to the documents.

On Dec. 7, 2012, a pharmacist at the CVS in Marlborough saw that someone filed a prescription using the driver’s license linked to getting false prescrpitions and alerted Marlborough Police. An officer arrested the man who when he came back to pick up the prescription. He was identified as Deignan, according to the affidavit.

When he was arrested, Deignan told a Marlborough Police officer that he was addicted to pain medication, the affidavit states. A Watertown Police Captain later confirmed to a DEA agent Deignan has “a problem with pills.”

The investigation found that since May 2010 at least 100 false prescriptions, including refills, were filed.

The License

Marlbrough Police found the driver’s license with the name used to file the false prescriptions on the front seat of Deignan’s car when they arrested him, according to the documents. When asked where he got the license, Deignan told police he “found it,” according to the affidavit.

The man whose name is on the license had been pulled over for speeding and ticketed for driving with a revoked license in Watertown in March 2010, the DEA discovered in the investigation. At that time the officer took the man’s driver’s license.

In an interview, the real license holder - who lives in Norwood - told DEA agents that he never filed any prescriptions in question, according to the affidavit. 

Deignan was arraigned in Boston Federal Court on Tuesday and was back in court Thursday for a detention hearing.