Pharmacy owner sentenced for illegal drug imports

Gets probation, home confinement

The former owner of a Monongahela pharmacy who imported drugs illegally from Canada was sentenced Wednesday morning to three years of probation, including six months of home confinement.

U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon imposed that term on Jeffrey Markovitz, of Clairton, who had owned Dierken’s Pharmacy on Main Street for many years and started working there at age 13.

She also ordered him to forfeit $650,000 and pay a $15,000 fine.

Markovitz had been charged in 2012 and later pleaded guilty to conspiracy and conspiracy to launder money.

He told the judge Wednesday that he was motivated to seek a drug supplier out of the country because his customers were complaining that they couldn’t afford to fill their prescriptions anymore.

He also said independent pharmacies like his are being squeezed out of the market.

So he struck a deal with a Canadian pharmacy whose ads he heard on his car radio to become his supplier.

“I know what I did was wrong,” he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nelson Cohen said the problem with smuggling in drugs from Canada is that the medications are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

“Buying drugs from Canada is a flat-out federal felony,” he said. “Our system can’t function with that going on.”

He said many of the drugs bought from pharmacies outside the U.S. are made in Turkey and other countries where no one is monitoring quality control.

“We have had these drugs hurt people,” he said. “That’s what the FDA protects against.”

A second pharmacist connected to Dierken’s was also involved in buying drugs illegally from Canada.

Bryan Polomoscanik of Greensburg, who worked at the pharmacy and later bought it, was charged in 2013 and pleaded guilty that year. He is awaiting sentencing.