Counterfeit prescription drug ring in Baton Rouge area results in multiple arrests
http://www.nola.com/crime/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2015/05/counterfeit_prescription_drug.html
Baton Rouge police and DEA make arrests on prescription drug fraud
Officials arrested eight people, including seven Baton Rouge residents, accused of using fake prescriptions to obtain $45,000 worth of pain medication.
The Drug Enforcement Administration Diversion Squad, with the help of multiple local police agencies, rounded up the people wanted on warrants for allegedly buying and possessing narcotics they collected using prescriptions made to look as if they came from Baton Rouge medical facilities, an East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office news release says.
The group obtained about 810 dosage units of Hydrocodone and about 1,220 dosage units of Oxycodone in the last year, together estimated to have a street value of $45,000, the release says.
Authorities booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Tuesday Mia Bindon, 36, 1314 N. 48th Street; Charles Benjamin, 46, 4260 Billops Street; Clifford Buckley, 55, 3436 Osceola Street and Darrly Richards, 51, 3324 Wenonah Street, all accused of obtaining a controlled dangerous substance and possession of a Schedule II drug. Bindon was booked on two counts and Richards on three.
Jesse Armstead Jr., 57, 1229 N. 37th Street, was also arrested Tuesday on one count of an attempt to obtain a controlled dangerous substance by fraud.
Officials also arrested in November Siera Pryer, 77655 Lee Street, Maringouin; James Dyer, 2829 Tecumseh; and Jasen Webb, 5145 Maple Dr., all on obtaining a controlled dangerous substance and possession of a Schedule II drug. Webb was booked on three counts.
Agencies involved in the round up include Iberville Sheriff’s Office, East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office, Louisiana State Police, West Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office and Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office.
More arrests are anticipated, the release says.
Filed under: General Problems
All I can say is: Look at every face there. They did this with crack, now they want us to be scared of pills. How do they do that? Prey on poor desperate black folks, making tons of raids and arrests in “their neighborhoods,” and idiotic mainstream will see these “evil brown daemons,” and then white people fear it. There are just as many, if not more Caucasians doing the same or worse. Pain patients still aren’t getting proper treatment. Nice distraction/scare tactic, though.
I’m a chronic pain sufferer and a pain management patient from this same area in the state of Louisiana. So far I have been lucky enough to still receive my medications every month without problems, but it worries me that people are making counterfeit prescriptions only 34 miles from where I live. I know that my scripts are legitimate but is this incident going to make the hassle of filling my monthly prescription more difficult? Thank God that I always use the same pharmacy and that my pharmacist has verified my prescription with my physician.
In answer to lespaul1963, I seriously doubt if any one of these people are chronic pain sufferers who were denied needed medications. I am more willing to bet that they were in it for the money. Law enforcement has contributed to a high demand on the streets for opiates and as it seems that there are people finding ways to obtain and sell them. Unfortunately with the computer age, countfieting many documents has become easier and criminals are now testing the waters to see what they can and can’t get away with. All these people are criminals and should be prosecuted, because its people like these that have caused a great deal of the problems today for people us.
Our law makers and enforcement agencies are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, they are too stupid to distinguish between addiction and dependency and will probably use this case in an attempt to stop opiate medication prescribing all together. There is a huge difference between taking a pill for pain relief and taking a pill to get high and most bureaucratic morons are way to simple minded to distinguish between the two. They figure that it’s easier to stop something all together then it is to stop the criminals doing the actual harm.
I do agree with you about some decriminalization of drugs, but only of certain things like Marijuana. If you smoke too much MJ, all you want to do is order a pizza and watch The Last Unicorn, if you take too many opiates you die. So opiates should continue to be prescribed and monitored by physicians because they are just too dangerous to be put into the hands of irresponsible people.
I don’t know how many pain patients (or drug addicts) would be helped by that small amount of drugs, especially over the period of a year. The DEA, creating more criminals with its opioid war — that’s called job security.
I wonder how many of the arrestees “customers” were chronic pain patients who had limited, to no-access to the meds that they need to function? I wonder how many times the legitimately ill and afflicted had their access interdicted by other members of the State’s Punitive Priesthood via intimidation and the occasional physician or pharmacist made a “Publick Example” in the virtual town square?
To add insult to injury, they, the State’s agents will do it again in five months, wash, rinse repeat or aka Whack -a-Mole. How many trillions have been wasted prosecuting this so-called war on drugs since the beginning of this venture in 1915. Most think that it started with the CSA of 1970. It’s been going on for a century now. Guns, handcuffs and cages haven’t done a lick to solve this. One would think that pursuing the same public policy for a century with no demonstrable, positive results, proportional to what’s been invested, would indicate that it’s time to try something new and radically different. It’s called decriminalization of some substances, legalization of others and treatment for the addict aka generically as a Harm Reduction Model.