Two California residents involved in the theft of large amounts of prescription medication from a Glasgow pharmaceutical wholesaler were placed on probation for three years.

Isaac Newman and Sarah D’Auria were sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Bowling Green after having previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit theft of medical products and conspiring to distribute controlled substances.

The pair acknowledged taking part in a conspiracy between Oct. 13-18, 2024, that led to the theft of a shipment of 288 bottles of codeine-based cough medication from Glasgow distribution company Richie Pharmacal.

The Glasgow Police Department investigated the theft, which was reported by Richie Pharmacal officials who said that a promethazine shipment from an Ohio-based distributor had not arrived.

While the charges to which Newman and D’Auria pleaded guilty carried up to 16 years in prison, federal prosecutors recommended probation for both people based on federal sentencing guidelines calculated by the federal probation office that showed both defendants had a lack of any prior criminal history and did not require imprisonment for these relatively low-level offenses.

D’Auria’s attorney, Scott Cox, requested that his client be placed on probation for a year, but U.S. District Court Judge Greg Stivers imposed a three-year term of probation on both defendants.

D’Auria and Newman each spent about five months in jail while the case was pending.

“I don’t see this as an inconsequential crime,” Stivers said while sentencing D’Auria. “I don’t agree with the way the (sentencing) guidelines characterize this crime at all.”

During the investigation, Glasgow police learned that the delivery driver carrying the drugs was met by a black car occupied by a man who said the loading dock was down and that the shipment needed to be loaded onto the bed of a white pickup truck parked near the Richie lot with the company logo on it.

Richie Pharmacal officials, however, confirmed to police that the company did not have a work vehicle in its fleet matching the description of the white truck, and the logo was later determined to have been either a printout or a magnetic placard placed on the door, according to court records.

After responding to the pharmaceutical company, police checked traffic camera systems and determined that the white truck had been rented by D’Auria and picked up in Nashville on Oct. 14, 2024, and the black car had been rented the same day by a Isaac Newman’s father, Robert Newman, and also picked up in Nashville.

Camera systems were used by investigators to subsequently track both vehicles, leading to the arrest of D’Auria and Isaac Newman.

According to court records, police in Utah who arrested the pair saw 14 large cardboard boxes in the back seat with labels stating that they contained promethazine.

A more thorough search found the boxes to contain 184 16-ounce bottles of promethazine with codeine, with the drugs inside having a total street value of around $644,000, according to affidavit sworn by a federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent in the criminal case.

Police also recovered a backpack from the truck that contained between $30,000 and $40,000 in cash, all in $20 bills, records show.

While the labels on the boxes described the drugs they contained, nothing on the boxes indicated the name of the shipping company or their intended destination, and labels containing that information appear to have been torn from the boxes.

“It is (our) belief that these labels were removed to keep anyone who might see the boxes from linking them as evidence of the theft from Richie Pharmacal,” the affidavit stated.

Isaac Newman’s attorney, Michael Goodwin, said in a sentencing memorandum filed Thursday that Newman was recruited by his now-estranged father, Robert Newman, to fly to Kentucky and drive a rental car with the stolen medication across the country.

“He played a minimal role in the conspiracy, and was recruited by his father, who was in an obvious position of influence over him,” Goodwin said in the filing.

Robert Newman is under indictment on charges of conspiracy to steal medical products and two counts of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, but he has not been apprehended, according to federal court records.