(A report by the Iowa Capital Dispatch) –  A former Hy-Vee pharmacy manager, facing multiple criminal charges related to the alleged theft of $71,000 worth of drugs, has agreed to surrender his license. The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports 42-year-old Jeffrey Jack Bates, of Indianola, is criminally charged with one count of felony first-degree theft, one count of tampering with records, one count of identity theft and eight counts of prohibited acts involving controlled substances. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. A trial date has yet to be scheduled, although a pretrial conference is planned for Dec. 22, 2025.

According to records related to a search warrant authorized for Bates’ home and vehicle, Indianola police received information in April 2025 from the Indianola Hy-Vee store indicating Bates had been fired a few days earlier and was the focus of an investigation into the possible theft of drugs. According to the warrant application, store management believed Bates had been creating phony prescriptions for medications using the name of actual medical providers and the names of both real and fictious patients, filling the prescriptions and billing the cost to insurance providers, and then later taking the bottles of medications out of the store at the end of his shift. The store alleged it had compiled video of Bates going through those steps and had correlated the timing of those actions to Bates’ computer entries.

The warrant and other court records indicate store officials believed at least 3,703 pills — many of them for Adderall, a narcotic, and the drug Vyvanse, a narcotic stimulant — may have been misappropriated.
In the application for the search warrant, a police officer reported that it was “important to note that Bates was on his cell phone a majority of this time and appeared to be texting/communicating with someone.” According to the warrant application, Hy-Vee personnel indicated they confronted Bates about the alleged theft and that while he admitted creating the phony bottle labels, he asserted he did so not to steal medications but to deal with discrepancies in the pharmacy’s drug inventory.

Hy-Vee Foods in Indianola, Iowa, where the former managing pharmacist, Jeffrey Jack Bates, was allegedly videotaped creating phony prescriptions for $71,000 worth of drugs. (Main photo via Google Earth; video still-frames by Indianola police from Iowa District Court records)

Court records indicate that on April 23, 2025, police executed the search warrant at Bates’ home and seized pill bottles, prescription paperwork and a cell phone. A second warrant was later obtained for the contents of the phone. On May 28, 2025, criminal charges were filed in the case, with police alleging Bates had created phony prescriptions in the names of 55 actual patients and four nonexistent patients. In one such instance, Bates allegedly used the name of one patient to create six fake prescriptions for more than 300 Adderall and Vyvanse pills. Police allege Bates also used the names of at least seven different doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants in creating the fabricated prescriptions. The Hy-Vee store has claimed the total value of the drugs at issue is $71,231.

The Iowa Board of Pharmacy alleges Bates is suspected of not only theft, but insurance fraud, with fraudulent billings made to insurers to account for the pharmacy’s cost of dispensing the drugs.
After the board charged Bates with knowingly making misleading, deceptive, untrue or fraudulent representations in the practice of pharmacy, and with diverting prescription drugs from a pharmacy for personal use or distribution, Bates recently agreed to surrender his license.