Mercer County Pharmacist Illegally Dispensed Millions Of Oxycodone Units, Sentenced

PRINCETON, NJ — A former Mercer County pharmacist was sentenced on Wednesday for her role in a conspiracy to distribute, outside of her professional practice, large quantities of controlled substances, including oxycodone, from a pharmacy formerly located in Trenton, U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer said.

Florence Ndubizu, 66, of Princeton Junction, was convicted on January 22, 2025, following a two-week trial on two counts of an indictment charging her with conspiracy to unlawfully distribute and dispense Schedule II controlled substances, including oxycodone, between 2014 and 2017 and maintaining a premises for the illegal distribution of controlled substances.

Ndubizu was sentenced to a 120-month sentence on June 2.

Ndubizu’s husband, Gordian A. Ndubizu, the co-owner of Healthcare Pharmacy, was separately convicted of tax evasion offenses after a jury trial in August 2024.

Between 2014 and 2017, Ndubizu was the co-owner and pharmacist-in-charge of Healthcare Pharmacy in Trenton.

She and her employee conspirators, acting at her direction, filled fraudulent prescriptions outside the usual course of professional practice, knowing that the drugs would not be used for a legitimate medical purpose, but instead would be illegally diverted, including to street-level drug dealers, according to documents filed in this case and the evidence presented at trial.

Ndubizu used her pharmacy to purchase and distribute millions of dosage units of oxycodone, including over 800,000 pills in 2014; over 900,000 pills in 2015; over 800,000 pills in 2016; and over 200,000 pills in 2017, the year that the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) suspended the pharmacy’s registration, according to Frazer.

Ndubizu diverted oxycodone pills and then evaded state and federal reporting requirements by manipulating the pharmacy’s records, according to authorities.

The DEA conducted an audit of Healthcare Pharmacy’s inventory and found that between April 2015 and August 2017 alone, Ndubizu and Healthcare Pharmacy diverted more than 64,000 oxycodone containing pills, according to authorities.

In addition to the prison term, Ndubizu was also sentenced to three years of supervised release following Ndubizu’s term of imprisonment and ordered a fine of $350,000.

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