Man says identity was stolen to buy 'purple drank'

DOUGLAS COUNTY, Ga. — A Douglasville man says he can't get the medication he needs because someone used his information to fill prescriptions for heavy-duty narcotics.

"I wouldn't think something like this would ever happen to me. What do I do? I'm scared," said Jonathan Nager.

He said he found out about the problem after a doctor treating a back injury refused to write him a prescription after his name was flagged in a state-wide prescription database.

"I think someone is filling medications in my name," Nager said. "The doctor told him that the database showed he had filled prescriptions for heavy narcotic pills at West End Pharmacy."

He went with his mother to West End Pharmacy in southwest Atlanta, and he says it was there, where he discovered that someone had been signing his name for prescription for drugs, including promethazine codeine, which is known on the streets as "purple drank."

"He even turned the computer around to show us the signatures. There was no match at all. (The signatures) were totally different," Debra Nager said.

On Thursday, state and federal agents raided the pharmacy, after investigators said it filled hundreds of fraudulent prescriptions.

On Monday night, a man from inside the pharmacy came out with two security guards, and said this in response to the allegations: "The DEA, the FBI,  if you all want us, come and get us because we are going to be over here doing our pharmacy. If you all got a problem with it, come get us."

No one from the pharmacy has been arrested. In June, Dr. David Battista began a 46-month sentence, after pleading guilty to federal drug charges.

WSBTV