A federal jury in Fort Lauderdale has convicted two Easton, Maryland brothers of orchestrating a multimillion-dollar scheme to buy and resell misbranded HIV medication, much of it funneled through South Florida suppliers and pharmacies, authorities said….Prosecutors said the brothers, owners of a pharmaceutical wholesale company, purchased more than $92 million in black-market HIV drugs from at least five illegal suppliers and resold them to thousands of pharmacies nationwide.
One of their suppliers testified that he purchased HIV drugs from patients on the street, removed the original prescription labels, and packaged the bottles in cardboard boxes—sometimes scavenged from trash on pick-up days—before shipping them to the wholesaler. On one occasion, the supplier used a diaper box he found on the street to ship the drugs because it was sturdy enough to hold the bottles. In a separate shipment, he sent approximately $500,000 worth of HIV medications in a single cardboard box to Safe Chain Solutions. Many of the bottles were dirty, scuffed, and missing patient instructions, yet the wholesalers accepted and resold them with falsified paperwork concealing their origin.
Source: wsvn.com/news and US Attorney, Southern District of Florida
