Two Colorado nurses appeared in federal court last week on separate accusations of illegally taking controlled substances such as fentanyl and hydromorphone from patients, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado.

Littleton resident Katie Muhs, 34, was sentenced to three months probation on Friday for illegally obtaining a controlled substance through fraud and deception. Typically, the sentence for this crime carries a four-year prison sentence, but due to her cooperation and confession, prosecutors agreed to recommend a probationary sentence, according to the news release.

Muhs was a registered nurse in an intensive care unit at a hospital in Colorado and used her position to acquire fentanyl for herself between June and September of 2019. She admitted to stealing the controlled substance by removing it from the IV bags of ventilated patients using a sterile syringe and stealing remaining vials of the drug after patient administration.

After she acquired the drug she would replace it with saline and have a fellow nurse witness her dispose of the saline. Muhs also admitted she removed a bag of fentanyl from an automated medication control machine at the hospital while using a different nurse’s login credentials, according to the release.

In separate incidents, Alicia Nickel-Tangeman, 44, formerly of Woodland Park, pleaded guilty to four counts of obtaining controlled substances using fraud and deception on Thursday.

Nickel-Tangeman admitted to using her role as a registered nurse to gain access to patients she wasn’t responsible for on four separate occasions. She told them she was conducting a study on the effectiveness of patient-controlled analgesia pumps, which deliver controlled substances to patients to relieve pain on-demand at the push of a button, according to the release.

Nickel-Tangeman used a key to open the machine with the substance and secured a syringe full of hydromorphone that was intended for the patient. She removed a portion of the drug and then returned the syringe to the patient-controlled analgesia pump.

When confronted by law enforcement, Nickel-Tangeman insisted she was doing it for “a study with a well-known university” and presented officials with a false e-mail “from a friend” asking her to participate in the study, according to the release.

Officials later learned the defendant wrote and sent the false e-mail to herself and used her friends name.

Nickel-Tangeman is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court on Nov. 30.

“We cannot allow health care professionals to feed their own addictions by diverting critical pain medications from patients,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Matt Kirsch. “Thanks to the hard work of our office, the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations, and the DEA, the theft of medications from suffering patients in these cases has been stopped.”