The online pharmacies were cheery, helpful-looking spots on the internet, promising the convenience of prescriptions by mail.
But, federal prosecutors say, a network of people in the United States, India and the Dominican Republic used the seemingly innocuous sites to distribute deadly narcotics manufactured by secret pill mills in New York City to tens of thousands of customers.
At least nine died, said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.
“The pills were filled with poison,” Mr. Williams said during a news briefing on Monday. “They injured and killed unwitting victims across the country over and over again.”
An indictment that was unsealed Monday charged 18 people with conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death; Thirteen people, including the group’s accused leader, Francisco Alberto Lopez Reyes, were in custody, prosecutors said. None had entered pleas, prosecutors said.
Some of the defendants were also charged with conspiring to launder money, taking part in a criminal enterprise and distributing narcotics that resulted in death.
That count was tied to the death this year in Dover, Del., of a 45-year-old woman whom Mr. Williams identified on Monday as Holly Holderbaum.
After suffering an injury, Mr. Williams said, Ms. Holderbaum, who had served in the U.S. Army National Guard, placed a single order for oxycodone pills “through a legitimate-looking website” operated by the defendants. The indictment said she received pills containing fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid.
When the pills arrived, Ms. Holderbaum did a search online to make sure they looked real, according to the indictment. But soon after, the indictment said, Ms. Holderbaum became severely ill and sent a text message to a friend saying that she was using pain medications.
“Her mother found her unresponsive in bed,” Mr. Williams said. “Dead from acute fentanyl intoxication.”
The sweeping scheme described by Mr. Williams and other officials included sham pharmacy sites, basement drug labs in the Bronx and Manhattan and a network of shippers who mailed drugs throughout the United States and beyond. There were manipulative marketing tactics that included free pills and an unrelenting barrage of phone calls and emails to customers.
It was all controlled from the Dominican Republic by Mr. Lopez Reyes, Mr. Williams said, describing that defendant as the “principal administrator, organizer and leader” of an ongoing criminal enterprise. If convicted of that charge, Mr. Lopez Reyes faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison, Mr. Williams said. It was unclear whether Mr. Lopez Reyes had a lawyer.
More than 40 phony online pharmacies, with names like “Curecog,” “Your Pharmacy” and “Care Online,” were operated by people abroad including in the Dominican Republic and India, according to prosecutors. They claimed to supply drugs like oxycodone, Xanax, Adderall and Ambien, used for pain, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and sleep.
“The pills they sold, like the pharmacies, were fake,” said Anne Milgram, the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who appeared on Monday with Mr. Williams.
The defendants combined powdered narcotics with other substances, according to the indictment, adding that the mixtures were then colored with dyes and pressed into pills using industrial-scale pill presses. Die molds shaped, compressed and stamped powdered narcotics into solid tablets that had the same appearance as legitimate pharmaceuticals.
What looked like oxycodone, hydrocodone, and Percocet contained narcotics such as fentanyl, the indictment said; what looked like Adderall contained methamphetamine.
The authorities said the pills were manufactured in the basements of two residential buildings in the Bronx and one in Washington Heights. In one, on Beaumont Avenue in the Bronx, windows were covered with black trash bags and dark fabrics and a surveillance system provided a live feed from a camera outside, the indictment said.
Shippers mailed the counterfeit pills from post offices in New York City, the indictment said, adding that over four months in 2023 four of those shippers sent 580,000 pills to about 2,200 people who lived in all 50 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and countries including Germany and Slovenia.
The defendants preyed on people whom they characterized as “disabled” and “helpless,” the indictment said, including some who were in chronic pain from serious injuries. They also pressured customers to keep buying pills. Once an order was placed, the indictment said, the defendants would follow up relentlessly with phone calls and text messages urging additional purchases. They also sometimes sent free “sample” pills to customers.
One unnamed 69-year-old woman from Tennessee began ordering pharmaceuticals from the defendants in late 2023, according to the indictment, and died in June 2024 of intoxication by fentanyl and other drugs. When she died, the indictment said, the woman had counterfeit 30-milligram oxycodone pills in her home that tested positive for fentanyl.
Even after the woman had died of narcotics poisoning, the indictment said, the defendants sent her five fake hydrocodone pills containing fentanyl along with a flier that claimed to have “the best price and the best quality on the market.”
“If you do business with us,” the flier said, “we will ship your order immediately.”
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