Saturday is National Take Back Day for unused prescription drugs
April 22 is annual National Prescription Drug Take Back Day, when law enforcement and the medical community encourage people to turn in and dispose of expired, unwanted and unused prescription medications. Studies show more than seven million Americans currently abuse prescription drugs.
The initiative is organized in April and October each year by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to make medicine cabinets countrywide a safer place, and to raise awareness about the dangers of opioid misuse and the importance of safe and proper disposal of unused or expired medications.
Drive-through sites at various HCA Florida Healthcare facilities across Central Florida, staffed by law enforcement officers, will be open to the community to safely dispose of their unwanted prescription drugs. Those include the HCA Florida locations at Osceola Hospital in Kissimmee and Poinciana Hospital, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, as well as Save-A-Lot at Southland Shopping Center (916 13th St. in St. Cloud) and the Sam's Club (4763 West U.S. Highway 192 in Kissimmee.)
During the last National Prescription Drug Take Back Day in October 2022, more than 4,900 sites across the country collected 647,163 pounds of medications and medical supplies for disposal.
St. Cloud loan originator convicted of bank fraud
A St. Cloud woman has been found guilty of three federal charges of bank fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.
Omayra Ujaque, 52, faces sentencing on July 15; she faces a maximum penalty of 30 years’ imprisonment for each bank fraud count and a mandatory two-year sentence for the aggravated identity theft count.
According to the Department of Justice and the Middle District of Florida, Ujaque, in her capacity as a licensed mortgage loan officer, created and executed a mortgage fraud scheme targeting the financial institution where she worked. To ensure that otherwise unqualified borrowers were approved for mortgage loans, Ujaque falsified the borrowers’ income by fabricating or inflating the amounts of their monthly child support payments on mortgage loan applications that she signed and certified to underwriters.
As part of the scheme, Ujaque created fictitious Final Judgments of Dissolution of Marriage and Final Orders Modifying Child Support that fraudulently showed borrowers’ monthly child support payments, which did not really exist. Ujaque then used the names of judges from the Circuit Court of the Ninth District of Florida and forged their signatures on the fabricated Final Judgments of Dissolution of Marriage or Final Orders Modifying Child Support.
Ujaque also created bogus Florida Department of Revenue Statements listing fraudulent monthly child support payments, as well as phony prepaid debit card statements listing fake borrower withdrawals of the non-existent monthly child support payments. In most cases, the borrowers did not, in fact, have the listed children and/or had never been married. Ujaque submitted bogus paperwork to the financial institution to support the false monthly income on the loan applications. Based on Ujaque’s misrepresentations, the financial institution approved and funded the mortgage loans.
