Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is celebrating the conviction of two criminal aliens who were engaged in a massive scam to manufacture and distribute fake pharmaceuticals. The scheme killed at least one American.
Francisco Alberto Lopez Reyes and Edward Eustate Jimenez are from the Dominican Republic. ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) originally exposed the scheme to manufacture millions of deadly medications that counterfeited real prescription drugs. Reyes and Jimenez made money by selling the dangerous pharmaceuticals, which contained fentanyl and para-fluorofentanyl, through fake online pharmacies.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press release on June 10 stated that one individual who took the counterfeit pharmaceuticals died as a result.
DHS officials lauded the convictions. “Thanks to the hard work of the brave men and women of ICE law enforcement, these criminal aliens from the Dominican Republic have been brought to justice,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. “These criminals ran a deadly scheme to sell millions of counterfeit pharmaceutical pills and ultimately killed a person with their fentanyl-laced products. Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS will never stop cracking down on drug-trafficking and locking up those who profit off of bringing this poison into our country.”
Jimenez entered the United States illegally sometime before December 2022, when federal authorities caught him in Arizona. But the Biden administration released him again. Reyes had to be extradited to the USA in 2024, however. The men have not yet received their sentences.
The press release explained further:
Reyes was found guilty of serving as a principal administrator of a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death, narcotics distribution, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Jimenez was convicted of conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death and narcotics distribution.
Indeed, the deadly drug crisis in America involves not only individuals who knowingly take dangerous drugs, but those who are tricked into taking them. More than two-thirds of Americans take daily prescription drugs, Single Care reported in February, and that doesn’t necessarily include all of the American adults who take over-the-counter products or medications they buy online.
Related: Violent Immigrant Fraudster Stole $100 Million to Fund Jets, Cars, and Orgies
Furthermore, the number of American adults who take regular prescription pharmaceuticals has been increasing, and the trend is likely to continue. In light of that, Americans are particularly vulnerable to scams such as the one that Reyes and Jimenez ran.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said, “A unanimous jury found that Francisco Alberto Lopez Reyes and one of his deputies, Edward Eustate Jimenez, ran a massive, predatory scheme to distribute pills containing fentanyl and other drugs through fake online pharmacies, including pills that tragically killed a United States Army veteran in February 2024.”
Clayton emphasized, “For years, Lopez Reyes was a one-man opioid crisis, duping thousands of victims by distributing millions of pills through the mail from what he thought was the safety of his home in the Dominican Republic. The pills were designed to look like real pharmaceuticals, but they actually contained deadly fentanyl and other controlled substances. The scale of Lopez Reyes’s distribution is staggering, as is the scale of the harm his shipments brought to our communities. A jury has now confirmed what New Yorkers know: if you deal in fentanyl, you deal in death.”
If the Trump administration had not come into office, Jimenez and Reyes would likely never have faced justice.
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