NEW YORK—Chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, or oxycodone? A ring of drug dealers operated a $1 million a year oxycodone-trafficking business from a Lickety Split ice cream truck on Staten Island, said city special narcotics prosecutors.
Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan and Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Donovan Jr. on Thursday announced the indictment of 31 members allegedly involved in oxycodone drug trafficking.
Oxycodone is the generic name for an opiate-based pain reliever commonly prescribed as OxyContin. It is a narcotic pain reliever, like morphine. An opiate with similar characteristics to heroine, oxycodone, is addictive, habit-forming, and is a popularly abused prescription drug.
The network distributed and sold 42,755 oxycodone prescription painkillers, valued at $1 million on the black market between July 2009 and June 2010, said city prosecutors who uncovered the drug ring via their “Operation Bad Medicine” project. The nine-month investigation exposed Louis Scala, 29, and Joseph Zaffuto, 39, the leaders of the drug operation and the operations of the 28-member drug network.
Scala and Zaffuto, obtained fraudulent prescriptions via a third defendant, Nancy Wilkins, 40, who was at the time working as an office manager for a Manhattan orthopedic surgeon, where Zaffuto was a patient.
“The surgeon had no idea Wilkins, the lynchpin of the scheme, stole prescription pads from the office without the physician’s knowledge, and sold the sheets to Scala and Zaffuto in exchange for cash payments,” said Brennan.
To get the 317 stolen prescriptions filled at pharmacies, Scala and Zaffuto recruited 28 runners, comprising mainly of relatives, friends, neighbors, or people already with drug addiction issues, or desperately in need of money, said Brennan.
Twenty-two smaller or independently owned pharmacies were used to fill the prescriptions, half of which were located on Staten Island. The runners, mostly Staten Island residents, were paid cash or with oxycodone.
Each forged prescription yielded 120-180 30 mg tablets at $200 and the street value for each tablet was about $20.
“The method of distribution was even more diabolical,” said Brennan. Scala, who was an ice cream truck driver, worked out an ingenious way of distributing and selling the prescription drug.
According to Brennan, during his regular daily rounds with his Lickety Split ice cream truck, Scala would stop at prearranged locations where he knew his oxycodone customers would be sitting and waiting in nearby cars.
After serving ice cream to the children, Scala would invite the oxycodone customers to step inside the truck to complete their transactions, said Brennan.
The illegal drug operation was unraveled when one of the runners, Raymond Cappola, was implicated in a series of armed robberies at pharmacies in Brooklyn and Staten Island.
This network had a predatory instinct for finding weakness in the community and capitalizing on it, according to Brennan.
Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan and Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Donovan Jr. on Thursday announced the indictment of 31 members allegedly involved in oxycodone drug trafficking.
Oxycodone is the generic name for an opiate-based pain reliever commonly prescribed as OxyContin. It is a narcotic pain reliever, like morphine. An opiate with similar characteristics to heroine, oxycodone, is addictive, habit-forming, and is a popularly abused prescription drug.
The network distributed and sold 42,755 oxycodone prescription painkillers, valued at $1 million on the black market between July 2009 and June 2010, said city prosecutors who uncovered the drug ring via their “Operation Bad Medicine” project. The nine-month investigation exposed Louis Scala, 29, and Joseph Zaffuto, 39, the leaders of the drug operation and the operations of the 28-member drug network.
Scala and Zaffuto, obtained fraudulent prescriptions via a third defendant, Nancy Wilkins, 40, who was at the time working as an office manager for a Manhattan orthopedic surgeon, where Zaffuto was a patient.
“The surgeon had no idea Wilkins, the lynchpin of the scheme, stole prescription pads from the office without the physician’s knowledge, and sold the sheets to Scala and Zaffuto in exchange for cash payments,” said Brennan.
To get the 317 stolen prescriptions filled at pharmacies, Scala and Zaffuto recruited 28 runners, comprising mainly of relatives, friends, neighbors, or people already with drug addiction issues, or desperately in need of money, said Brennan.
Twenty-two smaller or independently owned pharmacies were used to fill the prescriptions, half of which were located on Staten Island. The runners, mostly Staten Island residents, were paid cash or with oxycodone.
Each forged prescription yielded 120-180 30 mg tablets at $200 and the street value for each tablet was about $20.
“The method of distribution was even more diabolical,” said Brennan. Scala, who was an ice cream truck driver, worked out an ingenious way of distributing and selling the prescription drug.
According to Brennan, during his regular daily rounds with his Lickety Split ice cream truck, Scala would stop at prearranged locations where he knew his oxycodone customers would be sitting and waiting in nearby cars.
After serving ice cream to the children, Scala would invite the oxycodone customers to step inside the truck to complete their transactions, said Brennan.
The illegal drug operation was unraveled when one of the runners, Raymond Cappola, was implicated in a series of armed robberies at pharmacies in Brooklyn and Staten Island.
This network had a predatory instinct for finding weakness in the community and capitalizing on it, according to Brennan.
