Board: Nursing home worker stole dozens of painkillers from residents

Nov 05, 2026 | 6:32 pm ET

By Clark Kauffman

Board: Nursing home worker stole dozens of painkillers from residents

Heritage Specialty Care in Cedar Rapids. (Photo via Google Earth)

After being convicted of stealing the medication of multiple nursing home residents, a nurse from Preston has agreed to surrender her license.

In June 2025, licensed practical nurse Jaci Moore, now 33, was charged by Waterloo police with third-degree theft after it was alleged she stole 74 items, putting some in her purse and some in a shopping cart, worth $847. She later pleaded guilty to the charge and received a deferred judgment.

In October 2025, Linn County prosecutors alleged that Moore was working at the Heritage Specialty Care in Cedar Rapids in September 2025 when she “mis-administered and/or took” approximately 43 oxycodone pills by falsely claiming the patients had requested the medications and then falsely claiming she had administered the drugs.

When interviewed by police, Moore allegedly admitted that she had an oxycodone addiction and also admitted stealing 10 or 12 of the patients’ oxycodone pills. She was charged with felony prohibited acts involving controlled substances.

In December 2025, Linn County prosecutors charged Moore with a second count of prohibited acts. In that case, prosecutors alleged that an investigation by the state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit found that while Moore was working as a nurse for the Harmony Cedar Rapids nursing home in January 2025, she stole “dozens of tablets of oxycodone from residents” and tried to conceal the theft through false reporting in home’s narcotics log.

There were at least three Harmony Cedar Rapids residents from whom she stole the painkillers, prosecutors alleged. As with the previously filed case, prosecutors alleged Moore confessed to the theft and to an oxycodone addiction.

In July 2026, Moore pleaded guilty to both counts of prohibited acts involving controlled substances and received a deferred judgment that will wipe both convictions from her record after the successful completion of three years of probation.

In January 2026, the Iowa Board of Nursing filed disciplinary charges against Moore and, in September 2026, filed additional charges based on her criminal convictions.

The board charged Moore with misappropriating patient medications, committing an act that may adversely affect a patient’s welfare, failure to accurately document a patient’s condition and being convicted of an offense directly related to the practice of nursing.

The board then agreed to settle the case by accepting Moore’s voluntary surrender of her license, with the understanding that she can seek reinstatement after one year.

The Iowa Capital Dispatch was not able to reach Moore for comment.

Other recent nursing board cases

Other Iowa nurses recently sanctioned by the Iowa Board of Nursing include:

Jessica Larson of Lime Springs — The board alleged that while working as a registered nurse for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Larson was assigned to the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minn. According to the board, in April 2024 Larson “engaged in an inappropriate personal, emotional, and sexual relationship with an inmate.” When confronted by prison officials, the board alleges, Larson lied about the nature of the relationship.

In March 2025, she was indicted by a federal grand jury for abusive contact with a ward and providing a false statement to authorities. She later pleaded guilty to the false-statement charge and the charge of abusive contact with a ward was dismissed. In January 2026, she was sentenced to six months of incarceration.

The board subsequently charged Larson with having sexual contact with a patient, engaging in a sexual relationship with a former patient, engaging in behavior that is contradictory to professional decorum and pleading guilty to a crime directly related to the practice of nursing. The board recently agreed to settle the case by accepting Larson’s voluntary surrender of her license, with the understanding that she can seek reinstatement after one year.

The Iowa Capital Dispatch was not able to reach Larson for comment.

Angela Veenstra of Clive — In July 2025, the board charged Veenstra, an advanced registered nurse practitioner, with unethical conduct or practicing in a manner that is harmful to the public by violating patient confidentiality, performing nursing services that are beyond her authorized scope of practice, committing an act that might adversely affect a patient’s welfare, prescribing or dispensing drugs in an unsafe manner and prescribing or administering drugs to patients outside her area of specialty.

The board alleged that from August 2022 to April 2024, while Veenstra was working at a central Iowa outpatient mental health clinic the board has opted not to publicly identify, she treated patients with a variety of psychiatric conditions although she was not licensed as a psychiatric nurse practitioner.

In addition, the board alleged, Veenstra prescribed for patients a combination of medications that did not meet the expected standard of care given the potential interactions among those medications. She was also accused of taking a list of patients with her when she resigned from the clinic and then sending those patients a “mailer” of some kind.

Veenstra and the board recently settled the disciplinary case with an agreement that calls for her to complete 35 hours of educational training and for her license to be placed on probationary status for three years.

The Iowa Capital Dispatch was not able to reach Veenstra for comment.