Auburn’s Kathleen Gain, 31, pleaded guilty to the felony offense of acquiring a controlled substance – hydrocodone – by misrepresentation, deception and subterfuge, in violation of federal law.

Gain entered her plea Tuesday in U.S. District Court at Seattle. The offense is punishable by up to four years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a period of supervised release of up to one year.

She is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones on Nov. 14.

Court documents indicate that during 2007 through early 2008, Gain worked for multiple Internet pharmacy prescription drug Web sites, including myprimarymd.com, progressivemedicalconsultants.com and chatcp.com. These Web sites were acting in violation of law.

The basic method of operation was that an individual would order prescription drugs on the Web site, the would employ physicians to authorize the prescriptions, and the drugs would be delivered to the purchaser’s residence or the purchaser would pick up the drugs at a pharmacy. The physicians would never have any contact with the drug purchaser/customer.

No patient examinations were ever conducted by the physicians.

All of the prescriptions were illegitimate and unlawful, and the distributions of controlled substances were in violation of federal law. Gain’s duties included receiving customer orders and forwarding those orders to others.

As part of her association with the Web sites, Gain also called into pharmacies prescriptions for herself and others, using doctors names, and the DEA numbers belonging to those doctors, in violation of law.