"US doctor charged as member of drug smuggling ring; Wrote 920,000 prescriptions for painkiller" August 20, 2011|By Elliot Spagat, Associated Press
SAN DIEGO - A doctor who wrote prescriptions for nearly a million tablets of the painkiller hydrocodone last year has been charged as part of a ring that smuggled prescription drugs to Mexico from the United States, according to an indictment obtained yesterday.
The unusual operation brought a flood of yellow and blue hydrocodone tablets to Tijuana pharmacies, where American addicts snapped them up over the counter on jaunts across the border from San Diego, investigators said.
Authorities speculate that it was easier for smugglers to unload large batches of pills at those loosely regulated pharmacies than to distribute them in small amounts through American street dealers.
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It is also profitable: A smuggler who buys a pill for about $2 in the United States can sell it to a Mexican pharmacy for about $3.50, and the American addict pays about $6 to bring it back home.
“This organization found the black market in Mexico as the least risky way to conduct their business,’’ said Derek Benner, special agent in charge of investigations at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. “To distribute these types of pharmaceuticals on the street here in the United States a few pills at a time is a lot riskier. The organization has a lot greater chance to be exposed than one bulk shipment crossing the border into Mexico.’’
The risk of getting caught carrying drugs across the border into Mexico is minuscule. Motorists and pedestrians are almost never stopped for questioning, unlike the tough scrutiny they face entering the United States.
The 17-month investigation culminated with the arrest of Dr. Tyron Reece, a 71-year-old general practitioner who runs a solo practice in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood....
Smugglers strapped pills to their bodies or hid them in engine compartments before crossing the border. Their favorite checkpoint was San Ysidro, the nation’s busiest crossing, which connects San Diego and Tijuana. They usually crossed at night.
By law, Mexican border pharmacies must get prescriptions from Mexican doctors for powerful painkillers and psychotropic drugs. But it is easy to find ones that will break the law around Tijuana’s main tourist drag, Avenida Revolucion.
On a recent Saturday, a white-coated man behind the counter of a tiny pharmacy a half-block off the strip offered hydrocodone for $10 a pop, oxycodone pills for $15 each, and 90-tablet bottles of Valium for $130. He spoke fluent English and said prescriptions were unnecessary....
Profits from the scheme came back to the United States....
The investigation began when a pharmacist at a major chain in the San Diego suburb of Oceanside called state authorities about a suspicious prescription from an employee. The employee told investigators she got the prescription from Milton Farmer, 53, who was already on the radar of federal investigators.
The California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement joined the customs agency to pursue theories that Farmer was involved in smuggling.
Sifting through the trash of his Oceanside home, investigators found about 50 empty hydrocodone bottles. The peeled labels were clear enough to show a pharmacy in South Los Angeles. Reece was the prescribing doctor.
“It was like a puzzle,’’ said Chris Raagas, a state investigator. “We’d get a tidbit here, a tidbit there.’’
Hydrocodone, nearly as powerful as morphine, caused 2,499 deaths in the United States from 1998 to 2002, according to the most recent data analyzed by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
US border inspectors have long busted pill-popping Americans returning from Mexico but did not know how the border pharmacies got the drugs. Investigators say the San Diego ring is the first they found that was smuggling drugs into Mexico.
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"Lawyer pleads guilty in adoption scheme" August 11, 2011|Associated Press
SAN DIEGO - A California lawyer who specializes in reproductive law is the latest of three women to plead guilty for taking part in what US prosecutors called a “baby-selling ring’’ that charged 12 couples more than $100,000 to adopt babies born from surrogate pregnancies....
According to her plea agreement, Theresa Erickson, along with a Maryland-based lawyer who also specializes in reproductive law and a Las Vegas woman, recruited women to travel to Ukraine to be implanted with embryos created from the sperm and egg of donors.
Once the surrogate reached the second trimester of pregnancy, prosecutors claimed the defendants would “shop’’ the babies by falsely telling couples that a couple who had intended to adopt the baby backed out of the deal....
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