Answer Addiction

Tag: Drug distribution

  • Government Contractor Accused Of Plotting To Sell Drugs On Cruise

    Government Contractor Accused Of Plotting To Sell Drugs On Cruise

    The contractor allegedly laid out the details of the drug-dealing scheme on his work computer.

    Two would-be tourists were collared earlier this month in Miami as they boarded a gay cruise, where officials said they planned to sell drugs. 

    Peter Melendez and Robert Koehler allegedly hatched the idea in a series of emails before the ship was set to sail. They were caught, according to NBC News, because one of the men worked as a government contractor and sent the messages from his work computer. 

    When authorities picked them up, they allegedly had 27 grams of MDMA, 18 grams of ketamine, 246 grams of the “date rape drug” GHB, 7 grams of Viagra and 5 grams of the ADHD medication Adderall in their luggage.

    It’s not clear when the emails were sent or what, exactly, they said. But, according to a police report, it was Melendez’ decision to send them from his work computer that flagged the interest of Homeland Security investigators. Reports did not specify which agency Melendez worked for. 

    The men are due to be arraigned sometime in March.

    Last year, 38-year-old Storm Chasers star Joel Taylor overdosed on a gay cruise. In the hours before he died on an Atlantis Events-chartered ship, other passengers reported spotting him so drugged up he needed help back to his room. His death later sparked a broader discussion about drug use on party ships, and some dinged the floating festivities for failing to embrace harm reduction efforts that could prevent future fatalities. 

    “The comments online say people need to take responsibility for their own actions—if they use drugs, they’re responsible—and I completely agree with that,” LGBTQ activist Jim Key told Quartz. “But because the promoters know that there are people at their parties who are going to be doing drugs, they share some responsibility there. If you say you have zero tolerance for drugs, that’s not going to stop people from using drugs—but it is going to stop people from seeking treatment.”

    At the time, the CEO of Atlantis—which brands itself as the world’s biggest gay and lesbian cruise producer—told the online news outlet that the company went to great lengths to ensure guest safety and offered full medical facilities and an intensive care unit on each ship. And, he added, medical staff don’t share information with the police.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Man Who Shared Drugs That Caused Fatal Overdose Appeals Conviction

    Man Who Shared Drugs That Caused Fatal Overdose Appeals Conviction

    Two friends pooled money to buy heroin. Should the one who made the run be held responsible for the other’s fatal overdose?

    In October 2013, Jesse Carillo, a college student at the University of Massachusetts, headed south to New York, where he purchased heroin before returning to campus. Back at home he shared the drugs with his friend Eric Sinacori.

    Two days later, Carillo made the same run, and again brought drugs back for Sinacori. The next day, Sinacori died at age 20 from a heroin overdose. 

    Carillo was charged in connection with the overdose, and sentenced to a year in jail for involuntary manslaughter and drug distribution. However, he appealed his conviction and on Monday (Feb. 4) the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts heard the case over whether people should face charges when the drugs they share lead to a fatal overdose. 

    “When Jesse and another addict pooled their funds to purchase this heroin, it should not constitute manslaughter when the other addict overdosed,” Jay Carney, Carrillo’s lawyer, told The Boston Globe before the hearing. “We are asking the SJC to reassess the approaches taken in heroin cases given the opiate crisis in Massachusetts… These addicts should not be treated the same as drug dealers selling heroin for profit.”

    Before the SJC, Carney emphasized that Carrillo, who now works at a recovery center, was not criminally responsible for his friend’s overdose.

    “Jesse Carrillo was not a drug dealer. He didn’t profit from getting Eric the heroin, he didn’t benefit in any way. He just pooled the money, went to the dealer, purchased it, and gave Eric exactly what he had paid for,” the lawyer said, according to WBUR. 

    In Massachusetts, officials including the governor and attorney general have called for stricter penalties for people who provide the drugs that lead to an overdose. However, Carney insisted that these calls should focus on dealers, not people like Carillo who merely purchased the drugs for friends. 

    “I realize that I raised the hackles of the attorney general, who filed an amicus brief saying heroin is wicked bad. It’s wicked bad. We know that,” Carillo said. “What we have to determine is, is a person acting as a possessor of heroin when he buys heroin in a joint venture with another person?”

    Justice Scott Kafker seemed to take the point, especially since Carillo and Sinacori had purchased drugs together before from the same dealer that they used in October 2013. 

    “He’s bought this heroin multiple times, used it himself, he’s not died on any of these occasions. Isn’t that about as safe a drug delivery as we’re going to hear about when you’re dealing with heroin?” Kafker said. 

    However, Northwestern Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Von Flatern, who was prosecuting the case, said that Carillo was acting recklessly by supplying drugs to someone with a severe addiction. The case hinges on whether Carillo was acting in a “wanton and reckless” manner by giving Sinacori the drugs. 

    Around the country, drug users often face charges when the people they are using with overdose. In Massachusetts, the case is expected to have policy implications when the SJC issues a ruling, which is expected within 130 days.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Corrections Officer Accused Of Attempting To Bring Drugs Into Prison

    Corrections Officer Accused Of Attempting To Bring Drugs Into Prison

    Officers believe the man intended to distribute drugs found in his car to inmates in the jail.

    A Camden, New Jersey corrections officer has been suspended and charged after allegedly attempting to bring drugs into a correctional facility with the intention of selling them to inmates. 

    According to NJ.com, Christopher Bowie, 47, was caught with 21 Suboxone strips, four pills suspected to be oxycodone and six pills suspected to be Xanax. The substances were found on him as well as in his vehicle, according to court documents and a press release from the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office. 

    Officers believe Bowie intended to distribute the drugs in the jail, though they did not provide a reason for their suspicion. 

    Bowie was immediately suspended, and the internal affairs unit and the prosecutor’s office are investigating. Bowie is facing charges of distributing a controlled dangerous substance, possession of a controlled dangerous substance and official misconduct, according to the prosecutor’s office. 

    New Jersey isn’t the only state confronting such actions from corrections officers. 

    On Monday (Nov. 5) an Arizona detention officer was arrested on suspicion of bringing heroin and other contraband into the Mohave County Adult Detention Facility, according to AZ Central. 

    A Facebook post from the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office states that Ashley Desiree Aquino, 24, was questioned after law enforcement officials received a tip about the smuggling. Though the heroin was disposed of before Aquino was searched, other contraband was found and she admitted to bringing it into the facility. 

    “I hold all of my personnel accountable to their Oath of Office and will ensure that every measure is taken to fully prosecute Aquino for her actions,” said Sheriff Doug Schuster.

    In October, a former Georgia Department of Corrections officer pleaded guilty after being paid by an inmate to bring meth and marijuana into a prison in North Georgia, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 

    Tiffany Cook, 34, was caught with more than 118 grams of methamphetamine and 150 grams of marijuana in July, after police received a tip that she had been smuggling such substances into the prison.

    In 2015, CNN reported in-depth on the issue, even speaking with one former guard who had fallen into smuggling for inmates. Gary Heyward worked at New York’s Rikers Island and was facing financial struggles when an inmate approached him about bringing cigarettes in. In speaking with CNN, Heyward reflected back on his prison guard training instructor.

    “He said, ‘Look to your left. Now look to your right. One of you is going to smuggle something in, some inmate is going to talk you into doing bad,’” Heyward told CNN. “I thought, ‘Oh, no, not me.’ But, you know, you never think it’s going to be you.”

    While in prison for two years, Heyward wrote a self-published memoir called Corruption Officer: From Jail Guard to Perpetrator Inside Rikers Island.

    “A lot of people will look at what’s going on in New York… and wonder why,” Heyward said. “People do what they do for different reasons. It’s just people being human, letting that thing that’s most weak in them get the better of them.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Counterfeit Pill Ring Ran Out Of Vacant Apartment Busted By Police

    Counterfeit Pill Ring Ran Out Of Vacant Apartment Busted By Police

    The building’s super allegedly used a vacant apartment and boiler room to manufacture and package the illicit pills. 

    Three men were arrested and charged in the Bronx with alleged production and distribution of black market pills. Lab tests determined that pills said to be oxycodone were actually a dangerous mixture of heroin and fentanyl, while the 50 purported ecstasy pills contained pure methamphetamine.

    ABC 7 News reported that the men involved, Agustin Vasquez Chavez, Yefri Hernandez-Ozoria, and Roberto Castillo, are facing multiple drug charges after two separate arrests.

    The first arrest occurred in July when undercover cops on 201st Street and Grand Concourse purchased two bags of pills for $5,000. Chavez and Ozoria allegedly sold 860 pills as oxycodone and another bag of 50 pills as ecstasy (or MDMA).

    On September 11 police executed a second sting operation and arrested Chavez and Ozoria. Police confiscated approximately 3,000 purported oxycodone pills that looked to match the pills purchased on July 31.

    Law enforcement is awaiting the results of DEA laboratory analysis.

    Roberto Castillo is the superintendent of a five-story apartment building in the Bronx. Castillo allegedly used a vacant apartment and boiler room in this building to package and manufacture pills. Castillo worked with Chavez and Ozoria, who allegedly sold the manufactured and falsely labeled drugs in a large-scale black market pill distribution ring.

    All three men were arrested and charged on September 11 in connection with an alleged conspiracy to produce and distribute black market pills containing heroin, fentanyl, and meth, officials said. Chavez and Ozoria were arrested first, after which police were granted permission to search the boiler room and vacant apartment in Castillo’s building. There, in the boiler room, police found a pill press machine. 

    The boiler room and apartment were being used as a pill manufacturing operation, which included a pill press machine, pill press imprints designed to create oxycodone markings, multiple surgical masks and a vacuum sealer. The apartment contained a refrigerator filled with yet-unknown substances in assorted colors, as well as drug paraphernalia such as cutting agents, grinders and containers.

    According to an official, 420 grams of a heroin/fentanyl mixture were found in a suitcase, in addition to nearly 180 grams of methamphetamine and approximately 1,000 counterfeit oxycodone pills.

    “Narcotics traffickers have long exploited the nation’s high demand for pain pills, a powerful gateway to addiction, but this investigation reveals an even more deviant scheme—an organization creating and distributing counterfeit pills with highly potent and lethal compounds, manufactured in an apartment right next to the boiler room,” said Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan in a statement.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • News Groups Demand Opioid Distribution Data Be Made Public

    News Groups Demand Opioid Distribution Data Be Made Public

    Media outlets want access to the info to support their coverage of the opioid epidemic and increase public accountability by manufacturers.

    Some of the nation’s top news organizations, including the Washington Post, are demanding that the federal government release information about the sale and distribution of controlled substances by pharmaceutical distributors and manufacturers.

    The information, which is part of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) federal opioid distribution database, was turned over as potential evidence in the hundreds of lawsuits filed against pharmaceutical companies for their alleged role in the national opioid crisis.

    The media outlets want access to the information to support their coverage of the opioid epidemic and increase public accountability by manufacturers.

    As the Associated Press reported, the government consented to submit opioid distribution data culled from 2006 to 2014 from its registry to these lawsuits, but with the requirement that it only be used for legal and law enforcement purposes.  

    But on July 9, 2018, lawyers for the Washington Post and HD Media, which owns West Virginia’s Charleston Gazette-Mail, filed a request in a Cleveland federal court for release of the records. The Associate Press, along with other news groups, has also requested access to the information.

    “Where releasing records would merely bring embarrassment or adverse publicity to a corporation or a government agency, the records must be disclosed,” wrote Post lawyer Karen Lofton in a court filing on July 9. “In this case, disclosure of the distribution data would cause no conceivable harm to patients or other innocent individuals. If anything, their interests would be advanced by the public accountability that would be demanded in the wake of such disclosures.”

    Pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors are opposed to a public release of the information, as is the government, which argued in a court filing in June that making public the database information would have a negative impact on not only the companies’ distribution methods, but also criminal investigations and state public record laws.

    But lawyers countered by pointing to a 2016 article by the Gazette-Mail that revealed that drug companies made available more than 700 million pills to West Virginia residents between 2007 and 2012, a period in which more than 1,700 individuals in the state died from opioid overdoses.

    The Gazette-Mail obtained the information from drug shipping sales records sent by the DEA to West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrissey’s office and made public by a West Virginia district judge.

    The lawyers presented the decision to release the information and the story that resulted as a prime example of why the national distribution data should be made public.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Celebrity Names Used By Ecstasy Ring To Order Drugs

    Celebrity Names Used By Ecstasy Ring To Order Drugs

    The use of the celebrity names drew the attention of customs agents and led to the eventual takedown of a drug ring.

    A Michigan father and son convicted for their alleged roles in a large-scale ecstasy distribution and manufacturing ring took what may have seemed—at least, to them—a unique approach to disguising their identities in order to reportedly purchase drugs and related paraphernalia for their alleged operation. Federal officials claim that they used the names of celebrities like Tim Allen and Tracy Morgan as aliases.

    Sylvester Boston Sr., and Sylvester Boston Jr., were sentenced to eight and nine years, respectively, in federal prison for their alleged participation in the drug ring, which they are accused of operating from a computer store on Detroit’s west side.

    The Bostons reportedly used the comedians’ names to order a pill press from China, but claimed that the aliases and burner phones used to place the orders were used for privacy reasons. Sylvester Boston, Jr., has denied the charges, claiming that he and his father sold energy-boosting pills, not illegal narcotics.

    The investigation, which was led by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), began in 2013 when Customs and Border Protection officers seized an industrial pill press from China with fraudulent labels for shipment—specifically, Tracy Morgan’s name was written on the receipt.

    But the Bostons’ alleged use of celebrity names only drew the attention of customs agents, who opened a package addressed to Tim Allen and found BZP, a Schedule I drug and component in some ecstasy tablets which reportedly produces similar stimulation or hallucinogenic effects as MDMA.

    HSI agents, with the assistance of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Michigan State Police and the Detroit Police Department began observing the Bostons’ business, S&B Computer Repairs, and used wiretaps to record the father and son reportedly placing orders for drugs and related paraphernalia on disposable cell phones.

    According to the investigation, the Bostons reportedly manufactured the pills using the press and hid them in potato chip bags, which were intercepted by federal agents.

    A raid was conducted on the Bostons’ store in 2014, and agents confiscated drugs, the pill press, multiple weapons and a bulletproof vest. In addition to the Bostons, seven other individuals were convicted for their role in the pill operation, and six received sentences ranging from two to seven-and-a-quarter years, with one individual sentenced as time served.

    In an interview with Detroit’s WDIV Local 4 station, Boston Jr., denied the charges levied against him, claiming that the pills he sold were legal, “caffeine-based” supplements, and blamed his conviction on several factors, including another individual whom he claimed was “part of the Iraq mafia,” an informant who confused his father whom Boston said suffered from schizophrenia; and his own attorney, whom he said forced him to agree to the plea deal that resulted in his nine-year sentence.

    “They pretty much ignore facts,” said Boston Jr.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Overdoses Increasingly Lead To Criminal Charges

    Overdoses Increasingly Lead To Criminal Charges

    Family members and the public aren’t convinced that prosecuting friends—who are often on drugs themselves—is the best use of resources. 

    When someone dies from an overdose it is undeniably a tragedy, but is there someone to blame? Increasingly, the answer—legally speaking—is yes.

    It’s becoming more common for authorities to charge family members, friends and dealers with homicide for their role in securing drugs, or even their presence when the drugs were taken, according to a report by The New York Times. 

    “I look at it in a real micro way,” Pete Orput, the chief prosecutor in Washington County outside Minneapolis, told the paper. “You owe me for that dead kid.”

    Mark S. Rubin, a county attorney in Minnesota who has brought charges related to overdoses, said that the situation is complicated, but ultimately there is criminal responsibility. 

    “People agree, you know, there’s nobody forcing someone to take the controlled substance. But somebody might agree to take it from their friend or their boyfriend or girlfriend and they end up dying because of it,” Rubin said. “We feel that constitutes a crime of possibly murder in the third degree, but at least manslaughter in the second degree.”

    The Times found that in 15 states that keep records, there have been more than 1,000 charges of homicides related to overdose deaths since 2015. Between 2015 and 2017, prosecutions of this nature nearly doubled.

    While law enforcement officials say that this tough approach is justified and will stem the use of drugs, family members and the public aren’t convinced that prosecuting friends—who are often on drugs themselves—is the best use of resources. 

    “It’s kind of like blaming the leaves on the tree, you know?” said Michael Malcolm, of Breckenridge, Colorado, whose younger son was charged with the death of his brother, who overdosed on drugs that the boys had bought together online. “What about the roots?”

    The Times investigation found that charges are brought under a variety of laws. Twenty states have specifically made delivering drugs that result in death a crime. Others use standard homicide and manslaughter charges. In some cases, friends and family have been charged with dealing or distributing drugs, even if they did not exchange drugs for money with the person who died. 

    “State laws vary, but drug ‘distribution’ or ‘delivery’ is generally not limited to selling,” the Times reporters wrote in an accompanying question and answer piece. “It can include sharing drugs, giving them away, or having a friend pay you back for drugs you bought.”

    Many states have Good Samaritan laws, which are meant to protect the person who calls 911 when someone is overdosing. Often, these laws protect someone who may also be using, but if that person was involved in securing the drugs that caused the overdose they can still be charged, according to the report. Vermont and Delaware are the only states that explicitly protect callers from prosecution.

    View the original article at thefix.com