PAXTON — State regulators suspended the registered pharmacist license of Jenna L. Vogel — the onetime owner and head pharmacist of the now-shuttered Doug’s Compounding Pharmacy in downtown Paxton — after federal investigators allegedly found a cache of prescription drugs in her home, some of which she admitted taking from a former employer, the Ford County Chronicle has learned.
The complaint that led to the temporary suspension of Vogel’s pharmacist license — obtained Monday through a Freedom of Information Act request — also revealed allegations that Vogel’s pharmacy purchased more than 50,000 tablets of the antihypertensive drug Clonidine but never sold them, and that Vogel dispensed drugs to her children without the required prescription.
The four-page complaint — filed by Mary Meehan, chief of health-related prosecutions for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation — led to a finding that Vogel poses “an imminent danger to the public” and the suspension of Vogel’s license, effective May 5. A one-page written order signed by IDFPR Director Cecilia Abundis said that Vogel’s license was suspended, pending proceedings before an IDFPR administrative law judge, based on a finding “that the public interest, safety and welfare imperatively require emergency action to prevent the continued practice of (Vogel) in that (her) actions constitute an immediate danger to the public.”
As of Monday, Vogel had not been criminally charged with any wrongdoing in state or federal court. Vogel, whose pharmacy at 137 N. Market St. in Paxton suddenly shut down last winter, threatened to take legal action against the Chronicle when asked for comment on the complaint Monday.
“Any more (defamation) of my name, I will be pressing charges against you,” Vogel said in a text message to the Chronicle on Monday. “Before publishing the lies you have been (told) you should really find out the information about my husband that goes into these issues.”
Vogel and her husband have a pending divorce case in Ford County Circuit Court, according to court records.
Doug’s Compounding Pharmacy at 137 N. Market St. in downtown Paxton has been closed since last winter.
The three-count complaint said that Vogel’s husband on March 13 turned over to Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Todd Emery some Clonidine that had been found in the home they shared with their three children. Earlier, the children’s childcare providers had noticed they were “sleepy and lethargic,” the complaint said.
Four days before Vogel’s husband turned over the medication, IDFPR investigators requested invoices of Clonidine purchases made by Doug’s Compounding Pharmacy from Nov. 16, 2018, through March 8, 2023, and found that 2,000 tablets of 0.1-mg tablets, 48,000 of 0.2-mg tablets and 4,800 tablets of 0.3-mg tablets were purchased in that period, the complaint said. Meanwhile, during an unannounced inspection of the pharmacy the previous April, Vogel had told IDFPR investigators that her pharmacy did not dispense or stock any 0.2-mg or 0.3-mg Clonidine tablets, and she was “unable to produce any prescription that was compounded using Clonidine tablets,” the complaint said.
On March 10, IDFPR investigator Janelle Kirby met with DEA investigators, who removed an estimated 43,893 controlled substances from the Vogel home, the complaint said. The drugs included medications in their original manufacture bottles, as well as unlabeled vials, containers of compounded creams and products “with and without product name,” and loose tablets and capsules in the bottoms of bags and totes, the complaint said. Only some of them were Vogel’s prescriptions.
On March 28, Kirby met with Vogel, who allegedly admitted to “diverting controlled substances from her former employer, Scott’s Family Pharmacy, in 2017 and 2018,” the complaint said. Vogel allegedly admitted taking the medications and bringing them to her home, where she stored them in an office closet, the complaint said.
The complaint alleged that Vogel violated the Illinois Controlled Substances Act by “engaging in unprofessional, dishonorable or unethical conduct of a character likely to deceive, defraud or harm the public;” failing to sell or dispense medications; failing to secure controlled substances in a secure cabinet; and dispensing prescription drugs without receiving a written or oral prescription.
The complaint also alleged that Vogel violated the Illinois Administrative Code by “failing to establish and maintain effective controls against diversion of prescription drugs” and “committing theft or diversion, or attempting to commit theft or diversion.”
Vogel purchased Doug’s Compounding Pharmacy in 2019 from its longtime former owner and pharmacist, Doug Higgins, who established the business in 1997, after she previously did an internship there as a pharmacy student.
The pharmacy property has been vacant since last winter, not long after a foreclosure complaint was filed against Vogel, her corporation 137 North Market Street LLC and her company Vogel’s Compounding Pharmacy PLLC by the Arkansas-based First Financial Bank, which secured judgment in its favor this summer.
According to the foreclosure complaint, Vogel defaulted on a $1.75 million mortgage she secured to acquire the pharmacy in 2019. The complaint said Vogel borrowed $1,755,000 from the bank through a commercial loan agreement signed Jan. 2, 2019, but “failed and refused” to make timely payments toward the mortgage — which had a maturity date of Jan. 2, 2032 — and still owed more than $1,601,841 with interest of $15.83 accruing daily as of May 20, 2022.
Originally scheduled for July 26 and later postponed to Aug. 16, the foreclosure sale has been pushed back again to 10 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 7, according to the Ford County Sheriff’s Office, which will be conducting the public auction inside its lobby and selling the property to the highest bidder. The sheriff’s office is located at 235 N. Taft St. in Paxton. Anyone wanting more information can contact Paula Davis at 870-875-8734.
