Miami man distributed over $16 million of adulterated HIV drugs given to U.S. patients

Omar Rodríguez Ortiz
·2 min read
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A Miami man has pleaded guilty in federal court to distributing at least $16.7 million of adulterated HIV drugs that were ultimately dispensed to unsuspecting patients across the United States.

Armando Herrera, 43, and his co-conspirators established companies in Florida, Texas, Washington and California that they used to sell and distribute adulterated prescription drugs, primarily HIV medications, to wholesale pharmaceutical suppliers from January 2019 to November 2021.

A drug is adulterated if, among other things, any substance has been substituted in whole or in part for the drug.

“Herrera and his co-conspirators created false documentation to make it appear as though the drugs were acquired legitimately when, in fact, they were not, the U.S. Department of Justice said Monday in a news release. “The pharmaceutical suppliers then sold the drugs to pharmacies, which dispensed the adulterated prescription drugs to unwitting patients.”

According to Herrera’s criminal complaint, these were the names of the companies he and his co-conspirators created and the states where they were established:

▪ Rapid’s Tex Whole Sales Corp: Texas

▪ MR Unlimited LLC: Texas

▪ Invicta Wholesale Supply LLC: Washington

▪ Omom Pharmaceuticals Inc: California

▪ Titan Distributors & Services LLC: Florida

Two other wholesale companies not named in the criminal complaint were established in Maryland and Colorado to sell over 20,000 tablets of medications to treat HIV, including Truvada and Biktarvy, to unsuspecting patients. According to court documents, these companies could have paid Herrera and his co-conspirators as much as $25 million for these drugs.

Herrera and his co-conspirators obtained wholesale distributor licenses for several of these companies, acquired large quantities of “diverted drugs,” including HIV medications, and repackaged them to make them appear as though they were properly acquired through legitimate and regulated channels of distribution, his criminal complaint says.

Then they sold and distributed the drugs, his complaint detailed, to additional co-conspirators at the companies in Maryland and Colorado at steep discounts, “far below the prices available when the prescription drugs were sold through legitimate channels of distribution.”

Finally, investigators say Herrera and his people transferred a portion of the proceeds to the company they established in Florida.

This whole operation, prosecutors say, allowed the companies in Maryland and Colorado to resell and ship the adulterated and misbranded drugs to pharmacies cross the U.S., which billed healthcare benefit programs thousands of dollars for each 30-day supply of these medications to HIV patients.

Herrera pleaded guilty on Monday in the Southern District of Florida to one count of conspiracy to introduce adulterated and misbranded drugs into interstate commerce. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 21 and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.