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Authorities break up ring that bought, sold AIDS drugs
HACKENSACK, N.J. (AP) — Authorities have broken up a smuggling ring that bought AIDS medications from drug users, sometimes in exchange for heroin, and sold them to wholesalers who stocked pharmacy shelves with the potentially damaged medicine.
The alleged ringleader, Alberto Castane, 34, was charged Thursday with leading a narcotics trafficking organization and several drug and weapons offenses. Four other people — including his girlfriend and his brother — also face drug charges related to the ring, said Mike Mordaga, chief of detectives for the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office.
Castane allegedly employed dozens of runners to stake out New York City clinics where intravenous drug users received free kits of AIDS medications that were distributed weekly by Medicaid, Mordaga said. When the drug users emerged from the clinics, they were offered $200 or a packet of heroin in exchange for pills and vials that were later sold for thousands of dollars on the black market, authorities said.
Mordaga said Castane sold Serostim — a growth hormone used to treat AIDS patients with severe weight and muscle loss — to bodybuilders in area gyms, while other drugs were shipped to wholesale distributors in Florida and California. Those distributors then funneled the medication back to pharmacies for sale to unsuspecting victims.
The ring was operated from apartments where authorities found $4.5 million in AIDS medications stacked in boxes and shoved in refrigerators.
Investigators also seized a handgun, three cars, $500,000 in Ecstasy pills and an undetermined amount of crystal methamphetamine during raids there this week.
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