Police: Pennsylvania woman wrote dead doc's name on prescriptions

NEW CASTLE, Pa. (AP) - Police say a western Pennsylvania woman got caught trying to fill phony prescriptions because she used the name of a dead doctor.

Fifty-nine-year-old Helen Keidel, of New Castle, faces a preliminary hearing Aug. 26 on three counts of trying to illegally obtain Adderall, a drug used to treat narcolepsy and hyperactivity at a New Castle-area pharmacy in November 2008.

Two of the prescriptions were dated after June 22, 2008, the day the doctor in question died, and third bore the name of a physician's assistant, who cannot issue prescriptions.

Police say Keidel denied forging the names, but also couldn't explain how she got prescriptions "signed" by a doctor who died months before.

Keidel doesn't have a listed phone and court records don't list a defense attorney.

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Information from: New Castle News, http://www.ncnewsonline.com

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.