The top 3 prescription drugs thieves are after

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Crimes against Houston-area pharmacies remain steady with three happening in the last four days. The Drug Enforcement Agency says crooks are targeting three drugs in particular and go to great lengths to get them.

"They know exactly what they're going for," Pharmacist Jennifer Fulbright told Eyewitness News.

In July, her pharmacy, Uptown Pharmacy near the Galleria, was broken into. Early Thursday morning, a pickup-truck rammed into MedRx Compounding Pharmacy in East Houston. Hours later in Tomball, two masked men burst into TMP Pharmacy and in their haste to get away, dropped some of the drugs they stole. Eyewitnesses snapped a photo of them scrambling to pick them up. They were in such a hurry, one man's pants fell halfway down his legs, exposing his underwear in the pictures.

In every pharmacy crime, the crooks are looking for the same drugs.

"It's all about the money at the end of the day," said Wendell Campbell, a Special Agent with the DEA.

He tells us hydrocodone tops the list of targeted pills. Each one can yield $5-7 on the street. Soma and Xanax are right behind going for $3. All are easily found in home medicine cabinets but at pharmacies crooks can hit the jack pot.

"If they target a pharmacy, they could walk out with 5-10,000 pills at $7 each so there's big money involved," added Campbell.

The crime is steady with some pharmacies being targeted over and over again.

Eyewitness News' Crime Tracker shows through May of this year, there have been 65 robberies and burglaries just at Houston pharmacies. Nine of them have been hit more than once.

Fulbright says the industry works together to develop serious security measures.

"Every time it happens, we get stronger," she said.