HIV Positive / AIDS Twenty-eight-year-old surgical technician Rocky Allen put thousands at risk by tampering with hospital syringes for five years

Fentanyl is an opioid — similar to heroin — used to treat the worst pain cancer patients experience. The drug is so powerful, doctors prescribe it in micrograms. It’s incredibly addictive and deeply dangerous. From 2005 to 2007, more than 1,000 deaths were blamed on the drug.

Twenty-eight-year-old surgical technician Rocky Allen has allegedly been stealing it from hospitals for years.

In January, Allen was indicted on charges of tampering with a consumer product and obtaining a controlled substance by deceit for allegedly stealing this drug from Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, Colo., a suburb of Denver. He worked there from last August to January 2016, according to KDVR.

Further investigation found he’d been allegedly stealing the liquid drug and the syringes containing it for years, job-hopping from hospital to hospital across four states in the American West. In fact, he was court-martialed and discharged from the Navy for stealing fentanyl from a hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he was posted in 2011.

His method of thievery allegedly involved switching out fentanyl-filled syringes with ones he would sneak into the hospital that contained a saline solution, the Los Angeles Times reported.

On Wednesday, federal officials announced Allen is HIV-positive, the Denver Post reported. Since there’s no way of knowing if he ever used the syringes he switched the originals for, thousands of former patients could be at risk for the disease.

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