BILLINGS — A former Billings Clinic nurse plans to plead guilty to using syringes to surreptitiously steal medicine and replace it with saline.
A change of plea hearing is scheduled next Thursday for Donald Friedlich Mills III, who is charged with tampering with consumer products and acquiring fentanyl by misrepresentation, fraud, forgery and deception.
The Billings Gazette reports Mills plans to plead guilty without a deal with prosecutors.
Mills stole the opioid fentanyl between February and mid-March 2017, according to court documents. Prosecutors say Mills told investigators he typically took two vials at a time during most of his shifts over that period.
He told investigators he had neck pain and was dealing with anxiety.
The Drug Enforcement Administration seized 22 vials authorities suspected had been tampered with, and found no fentanyl inside 15 of them.