Ex-chief pharmacist at Erie VA gets probation for stealing patients' painkillers

Matthew Camera worked for years to get to the point where he was the chief pharmacist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Erie.

The 51-year-old Erie native went to college while working factory jobs. After years of battling throat cancer and while suffering from lupus, he eventually go his doctorate in pharmacy.

His career unraveled quickly, and in a federal courtroom.

Camera was sentenced to two years of probation on Thursday for his guilty plea to stealing 100 painkiller pills from patients' bottles at the Erie VA between January 2017 and June 2020, a month before he departed the VA.

Camera took the pills for his own use and was not distributing them to others, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. He was in chronic pain and addicted to opioid painkillers at the time he pilfered the medicine, made up of hydrocodone and oxycodone, according to evidence presented in court and the defense's sentencing memorandum.

"I can't begin to express how regretful and remorseful I am," Camera told U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter, who sentenced him at the federal courthouse in Erie.

The federal case is all but certain to result in the suspension of Camera's license to practice pharmacy for at least 10 years, said Camera's lawyer, Elliot Segel. He listed the probable disciplinary action against Camera in a 22-page sentencing memo that included details about Camera's professional trajectory and health issues.

"He has lost his profession and career that he worked so hard to establish for himself and his family," Segel said in the memo.

Camera, a divorced father of two, said his family had "suffered from this error I made."

Camera pleaded guilty in November to one count of obtaining controlled substances through fraud, a felony. He had been free on an unsecured bond of $10,000.

He faced a maximum possible sentence of four years in federal prison, but the recommended range under the federal sentencing guidelines was probation to six months of incarceration. The guidelines account for a defendant's admission of guilt, prior record and other factors.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christian Trabold, the prosecutor, did not object to a sentence of probation. The VA made no request for monetary restitution, and Baxter imposed no fine.

The investigation of Camera started when patients at the Erie VA complained that some of their pills were missing, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. They said they were receiving fewer pain pills than the number they had been prescribed.

The government accused Camera of "removing the pills from the pharmacy shelves, surreptitiously taking the pills and removing the pills from the" Erie VA, at 135 E. 38th St., according to the charging document. He took pills from pill bottles awaiting delivery to VA patients, the government and defense said. Camera cooperated as soon as investigators with the VA's Office of Inspector General confronted him in June 2020, the defense said.

Camera's sentence of two years of probation was identical to a sentence Baxter issued in 2019 in the case of another high-level pharmacist who stole prescription drugs for his own use.

In October 2019, Baxter sentenced the former chief pharmacist at the Pennsylvania Soldiers' and Sailors' Home to two years of probation for stealing more than 12,000 doses, or pills, of painkillers and other medication from the home between July 2016 and July 2017.

The thefts, according to court records, started two months after the defendant, James F. Franks, started at the Erie-based state-run nursing home for veterans. Franks pleaded guilty to a felony count of obtaining controlled substances through fraud.

In Camera's case, Baxter said she was impressed by the amount of support he received from his family and friends — the same people who supported him as his career rose. Baxter referred to the many letters from family and friends that Segel, Camera's lawyer, filed with the sentencing memo.

"I have never read letters quite like these," Baxter said. "You have good friends."

Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNpalattella.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Stolen painkillers at Erie VA leads to probation for ex-chief druggist