A Berlin pharmacy manager will serve three years probation for watering down hydromorphone, an opiate painkiller. He was working at a CVS pharmacy despite a lengthy history of stealing hydromorphone from Texas and Vermont pharmacies. 

Brian Thomas Badgley, 37, of Waterbury was sentenced last week in federal court to three years of probation after his conviction for obtaining controlled substances by fraud.

According to court records and proceedings, while employed as a pharmacy manager of the CVS located in Berlin, Badgley tampered with a bottle of hydromorphone oral solution by removing a quantity for his own use, and then diluting the remaining contents of the bottle with liquid Benadryl and distilled water. Badgley then reattached the tamper seal on the bottle with clear tape and returned the diluted Hydromorphone oral solution to the inventory of the pharmacy, from which it could have been administered to pharmacy patients.  

Badgley also obtained Hydromorphone tablets and Hydromorphone solution through misrepresentations and fraud, specifically by entering false entries into the pharmacy ordering system, entering false pill counts into the inventory system, and diluting the oral solution.  

According to court records and the public records of various state boards of pharmacy, Badgley stole hydromorphone tablets in 2015 as an employee of a pharmacy in Texas, and stole hydromorphone tablets in 2016 from a Vermont hospital at which he had been previously employed. He also practiced while impaired, Secretary of State documents say.

These prior instances resulted in the State of Vermont’s Board of Pharmacy placing strict conditions on his license to practice pharmacy.  Badgley’s license was fully reinstated in 2020, and then suspended on September 24, 2021 when the Board became aware of the new allegations of tampering and obtaining controlled substances by fraud. His employer confronted him about the diversion of drugs Sept. 21, while receiving a complaint that he appeared impaired while administering a Covid-19 shot.

The diversion of opiates were for his own personal use, Secretary of State records said.