Polk County nurse accused of writing fake prescriptions, pocketing pills

Image 1 of 4

A Winter Haven nurse was arrested for fraud and trafficking drugs, deputies say.

Polk County detectives arrested 52-year-old Jodi Levins, an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner and a former Polk County Sheriff’s Office legal assistant.

“She fraudulently used people’s identification, and then she fraudulently passed the prescriptions, and now she’s honestly gone to jail,” said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd.

Investigators say Levins was writing fake prescriptions for her former patients after being fired from a doctor’s office. She would then pick up the prescriptions at four pharmacies in Lakeland and Winter Haven and keep the drugs for herself.

“When we arrested her today she said they were for her, we don’t know if they were for her or if she was selling them, but we charged her with 7 counts of trafficking oxycodone for the amount of drugs she was dealing with,” Judd said.

Arrest paperwork says between July and October, Levins filled 32 phony prescriptions under six patient’s names.  That’s almost 900 oxycodone pills.

Judd tells FOX 13 News, the four pharmacies who handed over the meds will be reported to the appropriate agencies.

“The pharmacies should have been checking, because even though she could write prescriptions for some medicines, she could not write for schedule II narcotics,” he said.  “They should have never filled those prescriptions under her name, but they did.”

Levins was hired by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office in 1987 working in telecommunications. She was transferred to the crime scene unit in 1988, then became a legal assistant in 1998. She resigned in 2005. She was arrested on Friday morning at Lakeland Volunteers in Medicine, where she was currently employed. Her license will be revoked by the Drug Enforcement Administration, deputies said.

Levins is set to be in court Saturday.