Two brothers were found guilty on Wednesday of buying tens of millions of dollars worth of black-market HIV drugs and reselling them to numerous pharmacies, including two in Miami Beach.
Defendants Patrick and Charles Boyd were convicted of defrauding the Food and Drug Administration by using their wholesale business to buy more than $90 million of illicit pharmaceutical drugs in other parts of the country and distribute them to unwitting customers in South Florida.
After a three-week trial in Fort Lauderdale federal court, a 12-member jury found the two brothers guilty of conspiring to introduce “adulterated and misbranded drugs” into the pharmaceutical marketplace between 2020 and 2021, as well as six related charges, including wire-fraud conspiracy, which carries up to 20 years in prison.
The jurors deliberated for two days before reaching their verdicts, which included one acquittal of a wire-fraud count. The Boyds face sentencing before the U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas in January.
The Food and Drug Administration regulates HIV prescription drugs, known as antiretroviral therapy, which are used to manage the virus that causes AIDS. They work by strengthening the immune system and reducing the transmission of HIV to others.
However, “once diverted from the regulated distribution channel, it became difficult for regulators and consumers to know whether a prescription drug was altered, stored in improper conditions, had its potency adversely affected, or was otherwise harmful,” according to an indictment filed against the Boyds and a third defendant last year.
Used Florida wholesale companies
The indictment said Patrick Boyd, 47, and Charles Boyd, 44, owned and operated a wholesale company, Safe Chain Solutions, with offices in Miami and Maryland, the brothers’ home state. Their business partner, Adam Brosius, 61, from Palm Beach County, owned part of Safe Chain and another wholesaler, Worldwide Pharma Sales Group, in Delray Beach, which helped find suppliers of HIV drugs and pharmacy customers.
Before trial, Brosius pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud with the brothers and faces sentencing in November. All three men were accused of using their companies to buy the expensive HIV drugs at steeply discounted prices from a network of illicit suppliers that had purchased them from patients who did not consume them. The suppliers of the unregulated prescription drugs were in various states, including New York, Texas and California. “The diverted prescription drugs that [the men] purchased … were obtained by the HIV drug suppliers primarily through unlawful diversion ‘buyback’ schemes, in which previously dispensed bottles of prescription drugs were purchased in cash from patients, many of whom were HIV patients,” according to the indictment.
Bought HIV drugs from patients on the street
Among the witnesses who testified at trial: A black-market HIV drug supplier in Queens, New York, who said he obtained the drugs from patients on the street and put the bottles into whatever boxes he could find on trash pick-up day — including diaper boxes. He then shipped them to the men’s wholesale companies, Safe Chain and Worldwide Pharma.
The indictment also accused the men of purchasing the counterfeit prescription drugs without proper paperwork, known as T3s/pedigrees, and reselling them to pharmacy customers. The acronym T3s refers to the transaction report, which contains the drug’s pedigree going back to the manufacturer.
At other times, they falsified the paperwork to make the mislabeled prescription drugs look legitimate, including an HIV medicine called “Biktarvy” that was sold to two Miami Beach pharmacies that were not identified in the indictment.
“The falsified information in the T3s/pedigrees concealed the true origin of the diverted prescription drugs from Safe Chain’s customers and made it appear as though these drugs had been acquired legitimately through the regulated supply chain,” says the indictment, filed by federal prosecutors Alexander Pogozelski and Jacqueline Zee Derovanesian
In some instances, the Boyd brothers and Brosius “purchased and subsequently redistributed bottles obtained from the HIV drug suppliers that were falsely labeled as containing a specific HIV drug but which did not contain the drug on the label … and instead contained a different drug,” the indictment says.
According to trial evidence, on August 14, 2020, Charles Boyd sent his brother Patrick a text message stating, “Patient opened a bottle and it was different medication.”
Then, Boyd texted the brother: “It was from Gentek and sealed,” referring to one of Safe Chain’s HIV drug suppliers in Connecticut.
Boyd followed up with another text message stating, “It was replaced with bipolar med.”
By JAY WEAVER/Miami Herald
Jay Weaver writes about federal crime at the crossroads of South Florida and Latin America. Since joining the Miami Herald in 1999, he’s covered the federal courts nonstop, from Elian Gonzalez’s custody battle to Alex Rodriguez’s steroid abuse. He was part of the Herald teams that won the 2001 and 2022 Pulitzer Prizes for breaking news on Elian’s seizure by federal agents and the collapse of a Surfside condo building killing 98 people. He and three Herald colleagues were 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalists for explanatory reporting on gold smuggling between South America and Miami.
