Drug Trafficking for Legitimate Medical Use?
Some pharmaceutical drugs fetch a premium on the streets. In every class, there is that kid who, in elementary school, plays the role of class clown, to the annoyance of teachers and classmates, but once he gets to high school, he realizes that he can make friends by selling his Adderall pills to the same kids who used to bully him when he was younger. Florida dispensaries have only been selling medical cannabis for approximately the past decade, but patients have been using it to manage chronic health conditions, the same conditions that prescription drugs treat, for much longer than that, even if the procurement of the drugs took the form of giggles shared with neighbors on the street corner or in the hallway of an apartment building. Even as the movement to decriminalize cannabis and other controlled substances, such as psilocybin mushrooms and MDMA, gains momentum, prescription drugs account for an increasing share of the illegal drug supply. Many drug crimes occur when people buy counterfeit prescription drugs or divert legally produced pharmaceuticals for illegal sale. A less common scenario is where people buy drugs on the black market and sell them to pharmacies for legal sale, but that is what happened in a recent Florida case. Here, our Miami drug crimes defense lawyer explains how a pharmaceutical sales operation led to criminal charges for 20 defendants in Florida.
Many Drug Crime Defendants Come From Within the Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Industries
The stereotype about drug crime involves people manufacturing drugs in trap houses or buying them from shady characters on the dark web and then selling them on the street, but this is not the whole story. Yes, many of the drug stashes that police have recently seized have involved counterfeit versions of prescription pills such as oxycodone, Adderall, and Xanax; as often as not, these pills test positive for fentanyl. Therefore, even though the law does not differentiate between illegal possession of real oxycodone and illegal possession of fake oxycodone, the counterfeit pills are more dangerous.
There is a whole other side of drug crime that takes place in and around pharmacies. Some defendants face criminal charges for obtaining controlled substances under false premises, such as by stealing prescription pads, calling prescriptions into pharmacies while impersonating doctor’s office staff, or lying to doctors about their medical history to get the pills they want. Likewise, plenty of doctors in Florida and elsewhere have faced charges when they prescribed drugs to themselves or stole pills from clinics, pharmacies, and hospitals for their own use or for resale.
You Have Heard About Money Laundering, but What About Medication Laundering?
Illegal dealings with controlled substances come in many forms, but the case of the medication laundering ring that led to the indictment of more than a dozen defendants in the Miami area is different from almost all of them. It does not involve drugs prized for their recreational use; no one was diverting ketamine, gabapentin, or prescription opioids. Instead, it involved drugs that most recreational users have never heard of but which the healthcare industry needs, such as chemotherapy and immunotherapy drugs for cancer patients and antiretrovirals for patients with HIV.
The defendants operated drug wholesale companies in and around Miami and New York City, conspiring so that different companies were titled in the names of different conspirators. They then bought oncology drugs and HIV medications on the black market and sold them to retail pharmacies, where patients used the drugs according to their doctors’ orders. The operation began in 2013, and federal courts in New York and Florida issued grand jury indictments between 2019 and 2024. In 2025, Stephen Costa, who had been involved in both the New York and the Miami portions of the operation, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for his leading role in the enterprise. He received a prison sentence of 14 years. The Department of Justice press release did not contain any details about the other defendants or the outcomes of their cases, or whether any other cases are still pending. It also did not list the specific charges that Costa, 40, faced and whether the federal court reduced them from the original charges, pursuant to a plea deal, as happens in many criminal cases.
Contact Our Criminal Defense Attorneys
A South Florida criminal defense lawyer can help you seek justice if you are facing criminal conspiracy charges related to misconduct involving prescription drugs or controlled substances. Contact Ratzan & Faccidomo in Miami, Florida for a confidential consultation about your case.
Source:
justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/conspiracy-ringleader-78-million-diverted-prescription-drug-operation-sentenced
