A former Oregon State Police forensic scientist who worked out of Pendleton and Bend pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to stealing drugs from evidence, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
According to the Bend Bulletin, Nika Larsen, of Bend, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Anna Brown to two counts of obtaining a controlled substance by misrepresentation, fraud and deception as part of a plea agreement.
The Bulletin reports that in exchange for her guilty plea, the defense and prosecution jointly agreed to recommend a three-year prison sentence and 250 hours of community service as a condition of supervised release. Larsen, who worked at OSP crime labs in Bend and Pendleton, is scheduled for sentencing Dec. 12.
According to the Bulletin, Larsen, 36, worked at the crime lab in Bend from November 2014 until she was put on administrative leave Aug. 27, 2015. She had previously worked at the Umatilla County lab in Pendleton.
In April 2015, the discovery that 18 oxycodone pills were missing from the lab prompted an investigation into Larsen’s theft and evidence tampering
.
Investigators found that more than 700 controlled-substance pills had been stolen from more than 50 separate pieces of evidence Larsen had handled. The stolen pills included morphine, hydrocodone, diazepam, methamphetamine in pill form, tramadol and methadone. Many of the drugs are narcotics used to treat severe pain.
As of Monday, district attorneys in Oregon, and their support staffs, had spent more than 2,000 hours reviewing more than 2,500 pending cases on which Larsen had been the forensic scientist. All pending cases that relied on Larsen’s analysis were either dismissed outright or a continuance was sought to retest evidence.
In Umatilla County alone, 70 cases were dismissed, and 40 more are expected to be dismissed for the same reasons. In many cases where defendants were convicted of drug crimes, district attorneys have agreed to either terminate probations or set aside convictions to ensure Larsen’s behavior did not lead to unjust convictions and sentences.
The full story is available on the Bulletin website.
