(Harrisburg) -- A nine-county prescription drug forgery ring has been broken up in the region. The state Attorney General's Office says nine people have been charged in the case that involves the fabrication of hundreds of bogus prescriptions for powerful pain medication, like Percocet. AG Linda Kelly says the arrests are the result of an extensive grand jury investigation, known as, "Operation Self-Service Scripts." "This was an elaborate and long-running effort to generate a large volume of prescriptions that appeared as authentic as possible," Kelly said. Since 2007, realistic looking forged prescriptions were used to obtain drugs in several midstate counties, including Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon, Schuylkill and York. Two central figures, Samuel Genovese of Lancaster and Richard Wolfskill of Myerstown, Lebanon County, allegedly headed the effort to create and distribute the fraudulent prescriptions. Kelly says they eventually had access to more than 24,000 pills with a street value estimated at nearly $500,000. More than a dozen midstate law enforcement agencies assisted with the investigation.