A registered nurse who used to work for Boulder Community Hospital could spend the rest of his life in federal prison if he’s convicted of stealing pain medication from surgical patients and then replacing the liquid drug with an inert saline solution.

Ashton Paul Daigle, 27, of Lafayette, was arrested Tuesday night and faces charges of 108 counts of tampering with a consumer product. Each count is punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison.

He also faces 67 counts of creating a counterfeit controlled substance, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison per count, U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said Wednesday.

Detectives are continuing to investigate if any of the 350 surgical patients who could have been affected by the drug theft were seriously injured, Eid said. If authorities determine serious injury or death did result, Daigle faces 20 years to life in federal prison.

Daigle — who is married and from Sulphur, La., according to his profile on MySpace.com — is accused of repeatedly stealing fentanyl, which is a strong narcotic prescription medication that can be addictive.

According to an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Denver on Tuesday, Daigle used a Pyxis machine to obtain the drug that was meant for patients in surgery. Pyxis is an automatic drug-dispensing machine that tracks every time and every person who uses it.

Between Sept. 24 and Oct. 24, Daigle is accused of accessing the medication “regularly.” He withdrew from the machine “sometimes as much as 25 times in one day,” according to the indictment.

Once he had a vial of the drug, he would remove its “flip-top safety seal” and replace the fentanyl with a sterile saline solution that he created, according to the indictment.

Boulder Community Hospital began investigating Daigle after anesthesiologists noticed that surgical patients were “reacting as if they had not received adequate painkilling drugs,” Eid said. None of the affected patients was in pain, hospital officials said, but some might have experienced an “increase in discomfort.”

“We hear a lot about hospitals that don’t take swift action,” Eid said. “But Boulder Community is the model of what a hospital is supposed to do. They took action right away.”

The hospital doesn’t know exactly how many patients were affected, but as many as 350 patients could have been without the correct dosage of pain medications during surgery. About 200 of those patients likely were affected, and the others might have been because they went through surgery during that month.

All of the 350 people have been mailed notices of the theft and how it could have affected them.

‘Heard you got a good job’

Daigle, who was hired in June after passing the hospital’s background checks, was fired last month after admitting to stealing the drugs, a hospital spokesman said.

Authorities said Daigle was taking the drugs “for his own use,” but he wasn’t using them at the hospital. Officers still are investigating whether he kept them for himself or distributed them.

He doesn’t have a criminal record in Colorado, according to court records.

On his MySpace page, which has been taken down, Daigle says he works at Boulder Community in the “neurosurgery/operating room,” and he graduated in 2007 from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La., with a nursing degree.

Family members of Daigle, when reached by phone in Louisiana on Tuesday, declined to comment.

Wearing a long-haired wig, Daigle smiles for the camera on his MySpace page. Friends who posted comments on the page talked about visiting Daigle and his wife and helping them move.

On July 11, one person wrote, “So how’s everything in Colorado? I heard you got a good job!”

Among Daigle’s favorite movies listed on his page are “BioDome,” “Half-Baked” and “Borat.” His heroes are listed as: “Larry David, Martha Stewart, Bob Ross, Your Mom.”

The registered nurse also has created a YouTube.com account and posted 14 home videos including several featuring a dog named Lucy and one where he narrates a hike in Poudre Canyon.

’We are truly sorry’

One patient — Matt Aughinbaugh, 45, of Boulder — had knee surgery Oct. 1 and said he’s among the hundreds of people who received a notice that his surgery could have been compromised.

“That means a lot of people were in pain for no reason,” Aughinbaugh has told the Camera. “I don’t know if I’d go there again.”

Boulder Community Hospital spokesman Rich Sheehan said the hospital hasn’t reimbursed insurance companies or patients for the stolen drug because there’s no separate charge for the medication. None of the notified patients has filed a lawsuit against the hospital, Sheehan said.

“At Boulder Community Hospital, we know this incident is a violation of patient trust, and we are truly sorry this happened and will do everything possible to make sure it won’t happen again,” Sheehan said. “We did respond quickly.”

Days after anesthesiologists noticed a problem, Sheehan said, his agency had investigated the situation, confronted Daigle, fired him and called authorities.

The hospital has altered the way it dispenses drugs to ensure such a crime doesn’t happen again, Sheehan said. The machine Daigle is accused of using to withdraw the drug has been upgraded to alert hospital officials of “unusual patterns.” Using the machine up to 25 times a day might not be recorded as unusual, Sheehan said, but Daigle’s actions would have been noticed by the new software.

Daigle was making an order, canceling the order and replacing it with another solution, Sheehan said.

Boulder County Deputy District Attorney Karen Peters said that although Daigle’s arrest is “a significant case for our community” and has a tremendous impact on local victims, the county won’t prosecute the case.

“This is a case better prosecuted under federal law,” Peters said.