Crackdown Targets Web Drug Sales
Sep. 22–DALLAS — Thirteen North Texas residents, including an Arlington businessman, were arrested Wednesday in what federal prosecutors described as the largest-ever crackdown on U.S.-based Internet drug trafficking.
The scheme involved the fraudulent purchase of more than $200 million worth of medicine from wholesalers with the intent to resell the drugs, many of them controlled substances, through 4,600 Internet drug stores, U.S. Attorney Richard Roper announced.
A 201-count indictment handed up Tuesday accuses Rakesh Jyoti Saran of Arlington and 38 other individuals and businesses of conspiracy to commit health-care, mail and wire fraud, money laundering, illegal monetary transactions and conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.
If convicted, Saran faces decades behind bars and millions of dollars in fines.
“You’ve probably been spammed by them,” said Karen Tandy, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Some of the defendants’ offers declared, “No prescription necessary,” she said. Others offers stated, “No questions asked.”
“It sounds too good to be true — and it is,” Tandy said.
Roper said 18 people named in the indictment, including 13 in the Metroplex and five in posh neighborhoods along the Florida coast, had been arrested.
Investigators obtained warrants to search sites in Texas and Florida.
According to the indictment, Saran operated 23 Texas pharmacies through Carrington Healthcare Systems and Infiniti Services Group, which he owned. The heart of the operation was Saran’s Tech Centre warehouse on Tech Centre Parkway in Arlington, with other warehouses located nearby, according to Roper.
Prosecutors said that starting in November 1999, Saran and other defendants posed as drug purchasers for hospitals and other institutions, such as prisons, which receive discounts from pharmaceutical manufacturers. They then resold the drugs, many of them controlled substances, over the Internet, sometimes slightly below market value to make sales more tempting.
If no prescription was involved, the cost was several times higher.
According to the indictment, the drugs included hydrocodone, phentermine hydrochloride (part of Fen-Phen), alprazolam (Xanax) and promethazine cough syrup with codeine. The 1,869 pints of promethazine cough syrup seized in morning warehouse raids has a street value of $450,000, officials said.
Online prescription drug orders are typically verified by a doctor before being filled. In this scheme, prosecutors say, doctors and pharmacies pushed orders through without verification; some filled orders without prescriptions.
Investigators wouldn’t say if any doctors or pharmacists are facing arrest, although Tandy said 20 doctors and 22 pharmacies have had their registration to distribute certain drugs suspended by the DEA pending investigation.
It should be obvious to the public, the officials said, that buying prescription drugs over the Internet without a prescription is illegal.
The multi-agency investigation called CYBERx was conducted by the DEA, the Federal Bureau of Investigaton, the Internal Revenue Service, the Food and Drug Administration, the inspector general’s office of the Department of Veteran Affairs and the state Health Services Department and the Texas State Board of Pharmacy.
Eleven vehicles and seven properties in Arlington and Mansfield, and in Windermere, Miami and Boca Raton, Fla., were seized, authorities said.
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