NJ Hospital Worker Charged With Stealing $2.5 Million in Medical Supplies

A surgical technician working inside New Jersey's busiest trauma center used her access to hospital supply rooms to steal $2.5 million worth of medical devices, then sold them to a wholesale distributor in South Carolina while posing as a medical supply vendor, according to charges announced Monday by Camden County Prosecutor Grace C. MacAulay.

Marci M. Staub, 44, of Galloway in Atlantic County, faces four second-degree criminal charges: theft, receiving stolen property, distribution of prescription legend drugs, and impersonation of a representative of a medical organization. She is being held at the Camden County Correctional Facility.

The scheme unraveled through a combination of anomalous purchasing data and surveillance footage. Cooper University Hospital's inventory records first flagged the problem in December 2024, when supply orders for certain medical devices began climbing sharply without any corresponding increase in patient procedures. That discrepancy persisted through July 2025. The formal investigation opened in October 2025 after a specific category of missing equipment caught investigators' attention: Medtronic Infuse bone graft devices, high-value biologics implanted during spinal and orthopedic surgeries to stimulate bone growth.

Detectives from the Camden County Prosecutor's Office Major Crimes Unit reviewed surveillance footage from November through December 2025, which showed Staub arriving at the hospital with an empty bag and leaving with it full. In December 2025, the Camden County Sheriff's Office and hospital security detained her as she attempted to exit with supplies. She was terminated at the time of her detention.

Financial records revealed Staub received more than $427,000 in payments from the unnamed South Carolina wholesaler, roughly 17 cents on the dollar against the $2.5 million retail value of the goods she is alleged to have taken. Prosecutors say she impersonated a medical supply vendor to conduct those transactions, giving her operation a layer of commercial legitimacy designed to obscure the stolen origin of the devices.

Cooper University Health Care issued a statement Monday: "We actively investigated this incident and reported it to law enforcement as soon as it was discovered, terminated the employee, and continue to cooperate with the investigation. Theft or any violation of the law will not be tolerated at Cooper."

The hospital at the center of the case is a 663-bed Level I Trauma Center founded in 1887 and one of only three state-designated Level I facilities in New Jersey. It admits nearly 3,000 trauma patients per year. That volume makes the integrity of its surgical supply chain a direct patient-safety issue: when biologics like Medtronic Infuse devices go unaccounted for, hospitals face delayed procedures, emergency reorders at premium cost, and the risk that improperly stored devices re-enter clinical use through secondary market channels with no reliable chain-of-custody documentation.

The case reflects a documented vulnerability across American healthcare. Research estimates that between 3% and 15% of all U.S. healthcare expenditures are lost to fraud annually, and internal supply diversion contributes meaningfully to that figure. Devices sold through unauthorized secondary channels may lack storage records and temperature logs, leaving clinical end-users with no reliable way to verify their safety or integrity before implantation.

Detective Kristen Blantz of the Camden County Prosecutor's Office Major Crimes Unit led the six-month investigation and can be reached at (856) 225-8642.