Florida men busted in $28m drug scam: Sold pebbles and vitamins as cancer & HIV meds, sent to prison
Florida – After law enforcement dismantled a large fraud that supplied misbranded and diverted prescription pharmaceuticals to pharmacies across the country, two Florida men were convicted in federal court. Some of these prescriptions were meant to treat serious illnesses like HIV and cancer.
Boris Arencibia, 52, and Jose Armando Rivera Garcia, 45, were each given 57 months in jail on October 30 for their parts in two linked criminal operations that made around $28 million in illegal drug sales. The cases demonstrated how pharmaceuticals that were stolen or bought from patients who never took their prescriptions were repackaged and sold as real products.
Court records show that the men got expensive prescription drugs from people on the street, including people who sold their meds for cash and people who got prescriptions under false pretenses. To be safe and function properly, many of the medications needed to be kept at certain temperatures and handled in certain ways. Investigators determined that none of those safety measures were followed, which is very dangerous for patient safety.
Once they had the medications, the suspects changed the packaging and made fake documentation to make it look like the drugs came straight from manufacturers or approved wholesalers. The conspirators used fake pharmaceutical distribution organizations to send the medications to pharmacies across the country. Those pharmacies sold the pills to patients who thought they were getting medications from a good source, not knowing where they really came from.
Federal prosecutors stated the risks were quite significant. In some cases, the bottles had the wrong medication in them. Some bottles were loaded with vitamins or even pebbles, which could hurt patients and make them less likely to trust the healthcare system.
The first case, which was opened in 2019, was a huge conspiracy with 20 people involved. Most of them have now been condemned, and their prison terms range from 30 months to 14 years. Arencibia was a key player in the network since he bought a lot of medicines that had been stolen and gave them to other members. Rivera Garcia, on the other hand, started a business called LDD Distributors. This company got narcotics from Arencibia and sent them to another wholesale business owned by a co-defendant.
In that case, both men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering. They admitted that they used financial transactions to obscure where the money from the illegal drug sales came from and who owned it.
A second complaint, which was filed in 2025, was over a different but related business. Prosecutors alleged that Arencibia and Rivera Garcia ran a pharmaceutical wholesale organization that kept selling drugs that had been stolen to pharmacies throughout the United States. Once again, fake paperwork was utilized to hide where the pills came from and how they were handled. If that were the case, both men would have admitted to trafficking medical goods using fake papers.
U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida said the sentences reflect the seriousness of the conduct and the potential harm to patients nationwide.
“Diverted drugs put patients’ lives at risk,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones. “These defendants pushed tainted and repackaged medications into pharmacies across the country, knowing full well the danger. Our Office will continue to work with FDA, HHS-OIG, and the FBI to protect patients and hold accountable anyone who turns the healthcare system into a criminal marketplace.”
The Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, and the FBI were all involved in the investigation. Prosecutors stated that the coordinated effort was necessary to figure up a plan that included lies at almost every step, from buying to selling.
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U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles sentenced both offenders to 57 months in prison, bringing the proceedings to a close. This was part of a larger effort by the government to crack down on healthcare fraud and drug diversion.
