A woman has pleaded guilty to assuming 31 identities and feigning shoulder pain to obtain thousands of doses of potent narcotics from more than 150 doctors at numerous Mayo Clinic satellite locations in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Nanci M. Dusso, 50, of Eyota, Minn., entered her plea last week in federal court in St. Paul to charges of fraudulently obtaining a controlled substance and Social Security fraud.
According to the defendant's plea and court records:
Dusso often used Social Security numbers of people living and dead from Colorado, Utah, Oregon and Kentucky when visiting health care providers, explaining that she was seeing a relative suffering from cancer.
The defendant is suspected of receiving more than 6,000 doses of prescription opiates — among them hydrocodone, oxycodone and codeine — since as early as 2008 and visiting more than 150 doctors in at least 11 health care providers' offices in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
The addiction-feeding ruse was revealed when a nurse practitioner at one Mayo Clinic satellite location became suspicious and reported Dusso to security.
PAUL WALSH
