April 22, 2024: NY federal court closes cases involving fraud, second-hand HIV meds
Major Stories
Brooklyn, New York resident Boris Aminov received a nine-year federal prison sentence for leading a ring that sold New York City pharmacies second-hand black market HIV medicines collected from low-income individuals. The scheme, which ran from 2017 to 2023, cost Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurance companies approximately $20 million and threatened the health of patients who received the compromised medicine and those who provided it.
Nerik Ilyayev of Queens was sentenced to four years for running a multimillion-dollar health care fraud scheme. Ilyayev paid low-income HIV patients to fill their prescriptions at his Manhattan pharmacy, then bought the patients’ unopened bottles of medicine so that he could dispense the same bottle to many patients, submitting insurance claims for each transaction. Medicare and Medicaid lost approximately $5.2 million in claims as a result of this fraudulent activity.
As of April 19, 2022, federal investigation of botulism-like illnesses caused by fake Botox injections has expanded to 22 people in 11 states. More about this outbreak here.
Domestic News
News about pill presses in Texas and Mississippi. A Texas man was charged for allegedly injecting patients with counterfeit cosmetic treatments.
Robert Jessie Martin of Alto, Texas pleaded guilty to drug distribution charges after he was caught making pills that contained methamphetamine. Law enforcement found five pill presses, 29,000 methamphetamine-laced pills, and more than seven kilograms of methamphetamine during a search of his property in July 2023.
Law enforcement with the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics and the Alcorn County Sheriff’s Office seized a variety of illicit drugs and a pill press from a property in Corinth.
A Pasadena, Texas man who promoted himself as “MrInjector1” on TikTok has been charged with three counts of unlawful practice of medicine and one count of aggravated assault - serious bodily injury after allegedly injecting patients with non-FDA approved fillers and counterfeit Botox.
PSM tracks pill press seizures across the U.S. on our page about illicit pill presses.
International News
Counterfeit medicine reported in Nigeria and Vietnam.
The Nigeria Customs Service delivered millions of U.S. dollars worth of counterfeit medicines, including antibiotics, diazepam, and tramadol, to Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control.
Police in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam shut down a gang that allegedly bought expired or locally-produced drugs and fraudulently relabeled them to sell at a profit. They seized date printing machines, heat presses and other equipment, as well as drug packaging, including 35,000 counterfeit drug boxes, labels and stickers.