Home Bergen Auxiliary cop turned informant arrested again for prescription fraud

Auxiliary cop turned informant arrested again for prescription fraud

Sunday, 05 February 2012 00:06 Jerry DeMarco

EXCLUSIVE: The fall has been long and hard for former Palisades Park auxiliary officer Laurie Calvert, who went from wearing a wire to help prosecutors bring down a ring of rogue cops to being arrested once more for prescripton fraud -- this time by allegedly claiming the medications were for her dead father.

Laurie S. Calvert

(MUGSHOT courtesy Bogota PD)Investigating a string of burglaries involving Asian immigrants who kept large sums of cash around their homes because they distrusted American banks, the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office turned to Calvert in 1995.

Calvert, who handled parking enforcement, traffic control and special details, recorded conversations not only with the targeted officers but also with their spouses and friends. She also secretly had a duplicate key made for a radio car so it could be bugged.

Federal authorities eventually took over the case, which led to convictions or guilty pleas from five crooked cops.

Calvert was eventually denied reappointment in 1997 when a new administration took over. This ended a 19-year career with the department, the last two of which she spent insisting that she was being harassed.

Borough officials said she never supported with evidence and ignored their advice to take her case to the county prosecutor.

Calvert, who ended up suing the borough, later called herself a “rat” in interviews. The episode sent her into a deep depression, she said.

Calvert was first arrested in 2001 after police said she posed as a doctor to obtain prescription medications for pain and anxiety in Fairview, Fort Lee, Hackensack, Palisades Park, and Teaneck.

A year later, police charged her with using an illegal handgun in an aggravated assaul -- following another incident involving falsely obtained meds. A judge later put her on probation for two years.

Bogota Detective Geoffrey Cole said he discovered this week that Calvert was filling prescriptions for the highly addictive painkiller Oxycodone, for Fentanyl pain-killing patches and for Alprazaolam, which is the generic equivalent of Xanax and is used to treat depression, by using her late father's prescriptions the past seven months.

"She had some of the prescriptions with her when she was arrested," Bogota Police Chief John C. Burke told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

"We're still calculating how many she had altogether," the chief said late Friday.

Calvert remained held on $15,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail early Sunday, pending a Municipal Court date. She is charged with obtaining a controlled dangerous substance by fraud.