Sale, Misuse of Smuggled Drugs Spread

Major shipments of Mexican prescription drugs are being smuggled into Southern California from Tijuana, fueling ever greater sales through illegal back room clinics and storefronts, state and federal officials say.

The pervasive black market sales, mainly by Latino merchants, have emboldened shop owners not only to sell pharmaceuticals to immigrant customers but to take a more dangerous new step: Some merchants are giving injections and practicing medicine on customers.

Tustin police are investigating whether the illegal practice contributed to the death Monday of 18-month-old Selene Segura Rios. She died two hours after receiving what her parents were told was a penicillin injection in the back room of a toy store.

She was the second Latino child in the last 10 months to die after receiving injections from unlicensed practitioners in Orange County.

“Stores selling illegal prescription drugs of all kinds are a pervasive problem in the Hispanic community,” said Howard Ratzky, the state’s supervising drug investigator for Southern California. “It’s very hard to stop, and nobody knows how many stores out there are engaging in this.”

Ratzky said the issue has gone beyond “the trend of an unlicensed store selling prescription drugs.” Some stores, he said, “have begun offering medical treatment by people identifying themselves as physicians.”

“Unfortunately, immigrants know where these places are. They’ll go to the back of the store and . . . an untrained person will give a kid an injection,” a U.S. Customs agent said.

The problem with Mexican drugs is that many are counterfeit medicines and the quality control is lax, said Customs Agent Lisa Fairchild. “A scarier danger is that sometimes the packets don’t contain the medication that the label says is inside,” Fairchild said.

On Wednesday, the same day that Tustin police announced Selene’s death, state agents and local police raided the Trolley Minimart on Valley Boulevard in El Monte. Investigators seized syringes and numerous pharmaceuticals manufactured in Mexico and hidden in false bottoms of cleanser containers and disguised in vitamin bottles, Ratzky said.

Los Angeles and Orange counties “are a big market for pharmaceuticals smuggled from Tijuana,” said a U.S. Customs agent who specializes in cases involving illegal prescription drugs. “The problem has grown dramatically in the last three or four years, but nobody has a handle on how much is being brought across.”

Figures released by customs officials Friday show 107 seizures of pharmaceuticals at ports along the California-Mexico border in the last four months. Six people have been arrested on smuggling charges while in possession of a variety of restricted prescription drugs, including antibiotics, opiates, barbiturates and Viagra.

Buyers of illegal prescription drugs are typically low-income and uninsured people, mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America. But they can also be unwitting customers of pharmacies that bring in medications from Mexico.

The customs agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said pharmaceutical smugglers range from the nondescript to people like Cliff Holt, a Park City, Utah, pharmacist. Holt was arrested after customs inspectors seized 19,000 prescription pharmaceuticals at the San Ysidro port of entry Jan. 17, 1998.

Federal prosecutors said Holt purchased the drugs cheaply in Tijuana and sold them as U.S.-made pharmaceuticals, making an exorbitant profit in the process. Holt was sentenced to 13 months in federal prison.

State and federal law enforcement officials applauded efforts last year by Los Angeles County authorities to block the sale of illegally imported pharmaceuticals. Los Angeles has a vast underground for illegal prescription drugs, the customs agent said. Stunned by the level of black market commerce in illegally imported drugs in Los Angeles County’s Latino community, Supervisor Gloria Molina pushed for an emergency state law to enable counties to crack down on vendors and stiffen penalties against them.

Since the law went into effect last September, county health and law enforcement officials have been investigating and raiding vendors on a regular basis.

One sting operation last year at El Mercado, a popular Latino marketplace in Boyle Heights, netted drugs with a street value of nearly $1 million. In another sting last weekend at swap meets in La Mirada, Pico Rivera and El Monte, police arrested 14 people.

The problem is rampant, Molina said. Even with the new law, she said, “people are taking the risk because there’s quite a market out there for these drugs.”

Customs inspectors and agents said that seizing illegal pharmaceuticals at the border is a difficult task. Conventional drug detection methods, which work well on cocaine, marijuana and heroin smugglers, are almost ineffective against prescription drug smugglers, authorities say.

“You almost have to be lucky--inspect the right vehicle or look in just the right backpack to stop it,” said the customs agent interviewed by The Times.

“We have rat packers who make multiple trips, bringing in small amounts at a time,” he said. “They store them in San Diego and, when they have a bunch, move them to Orange or Los Angeles counties.”

Lenient penalties also encourage people to smuggle pharmaceuticals, even after they have been arrested multiple times. Illegal possession of prescription drugs is usually prosecuted as a misdemeanor in state court. Practicing medicine without a license, however, is prosecuted as a felony.

The back room of Los Hermanos Gift Shop, the Tustin store where baby Selene received the injection, was stocked with hundreds of illegal pharmaceuticals and syringes, police said.

But Lt. Michael Shanahan said that unless investigators can prove the injection contributed to the child’s death, the store owner and the person who administered the shot can only be charged with misdemeanors. The owner, Carlos Eduardo King, was convicted in 1992 of selling prescription drugs at a swap meet in Orange.

Last April, toddler Christopher Martinez died after being treated for flu-like symptoms at a storefront clinic in Santa Ana by Gamaliel Moreno, who the boy’s parents believed was a physician. Moreno gave the baby five injections of an unknown substance and, after the incident, fled to Mexico. A murder warrant was issued.

Times staff writer Julie Marquis contributed to this story.

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