Three California residents face federal criminal charges in Kentucky after investigators reportedly uncovered a theft of prescription medications worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on the street from a Glasgow pharmaceutical distributor.

A federal grand jury earlier this month indicted Robert Newman, Isaac Newman and Sarah D’Auria on two counts of conspiring to distribute controlled substances and a count of conspiring to steal medical products.

Isaac Newman and D’Auria appeared Monday in U.S. District Court for arraignment, where they pleaded not guilty.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Brent Brennenstuhl ordered D’Auria held in custody while the case is pending, and a detention hearing for Newman was postponed after Newman informed the court he planned to hire an attorney to replace his court-appointed lawyer.

A lengthy investigation involving law enforcement agencies in multiple states led to the arrests of the three people in October.

According to federal court records, Isaac Newman, 28, and D’Auria, 27, were arrested Oct. 17 in Utah by police who found evidence tying them to the theft of 288 bottles of promethazine with codeine three days earlier from Richie Pharmacal in Glasgow.

Richie Pharmacal’s website says it is an authorized distributor for more than 95 generic manufacturers of FDA-approved drugs, delivering products to independent pharmacies, hospitals, clinics, doctor’s offices and re-packagers.

An affidavit supporting a federal criminal complaint sworn by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent against the three co-defendants stated that the Glasgow Police Department responded to the reported theft on Dec. 14, with company officials reporting that the promethazine shipment sent from an Ohio-based distributor had not arrived.

Police learned that the delivery driver 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.

“This logo was later determined to be either a printed logo or magnetic placard placed on the vehicle door,” the federal affidavit said, adding that Richie Pharmacal officials confirmed that it did not have any work vehicle matching the description of the white pickup truck provided by the delivery driver, who provided police with a copy of the delivery receipt.

Police checking traffic camera systems found the white pickup truck and learned that it had been rented by D’Auria and picked up in Nashville on Oct. 14, and that the black car had been rented by Robert Newman that same day and also picked up in Nashville.

Investigators used camera systems to track the vehicles to Minnesota and further investigation led police to believe the vehicles were on their way to California, court records show.

On Oct. 17, the truck, carrying D’Auria and Issac Newman, was stopped in Utah for a traffic violation, and police there 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, the affidavit said.

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.

While Isaac Newman and D’Auria were arrested in Utah, Glasgow police learned that the car believed to have been rented by Robert Newman was turned in Oct. 14 at a Colorado rental agency, with Newman then renting a white BMW.

Police in Colorado were able to intercept the car Oct. 18 and detain Newman, who matched the description given by the delivery driver of the first person the driver made contact with at Richie Pharmacal when bringing the shipment, records show.

“Investigators then searched the BMW where investigators located numerous pharmacy bottles of hydrocodone, shotgun shells and numerous other items that appeared to be stolen such as trail cameras and backpacks/bags,” the affidavit said.

Police examining the bottles of hydrocodone saw that they contained information consistent with a shipment of bottles that were destined for Richie Pharmacal on July 9 but were reported stolen and rerouted to a Bowling Green retailer.

According to court records, the July incident got the attention of the Louisville Division Office of the DEA, which documented a total of 10 diverted drug shipments totaling more than 846,000 dosage units of drugs, including 756,000 dosage units of hydrocodone, along with fentanyl, oxycodone, hydromorphone and lisdexamfetamine, commonly sold as Vyvanse.

Efforts to find the people responsible for the theft involved obtaining warrants for trackers to be placed in a decoy shipment of medications and delivered to Kentucky from the New York-based distributor that was the source of the original rerouted shipment.

This decoy shipment, however, was not rerouted by the then-unknown suspects, but U.S. Homeland Security agents working in the area became aware of two more drug shipments that were rerouted in August from Richie Pharmacal to a Scottsville retailer, and police learned from FedEx security officials that another three packages destined for Richie had also been rerouted to the same Scottsville business, leading agents to set up surveillance at the retailer, but the packages were not retrieved, records show.