3 in Family Charged With Sale of Illegal Medicines

A three-month investigation by the district attorney’s office has led to charges against an Orange County family of storing and selling illegal pharmaceuticals, including dipyrone, a dangerous painkiller banned in at least 22 countries.

Marcos Perez Ramirez, 26, of Santa Ana pleaded not guilty Wednesday to possessing and selling controlled substances and misbranded drugs.

His wife, Ana Edilia Mota, 24, and his mother, Eliza Ramirez De Perez, 62, were also charged, but their arraignments were postponed. All are free without bail.

Reached at home Wednesday, Ramirez said he and his family sell only ointments, creams and similar items at swap meets.

The authorities are “making us out to be the Kings,” Ramirez said, referring to an Orange County family accused of running a medicine-smuggling operation. A member of the King family was arrested last month and others are being sought.

Ramirez, his wife and mother were first given citations in June at a swap meet at Orange Coast College, where authorities seized 460 types of medicine from various booths, including those run by Ramirez and his family.

In May, police served a search warrant and confiscated drugs at an herbal-medicine store in Santa Ana, Farmacia Naturista, run by another member of the family. There, authorities found four coolers with medicines worth close to $5,000, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Byron Nelson.

Nelson, who heads the D.A.’s task force on illegal pharmaceuticals, said the two incidents led investigators to three more places in Orange County where they believed pharmaceuticals were stored.

Last month, investigators searched those locations, as well as Ramirez’s Santa Ana home, and two apartments in Tustin where some of his relatives were living. Authorities also searched Farmacia Naturista again.

Nelson said detectives found dipyrone, Lincocin and diazepam, which is sometimes marketed under the Valium trade name, in Ramirez’s house, which he shares with his mother, wife and other relatives.

Dipyrone was banned in the U.S. in 1977, and the use of Lincocin is highly restricted with much safer alternatives available.

A Times series in May detailed how these drugs and others are smuggled from Mexico, where medicines are sold with little regulation. They are brought to Southern California, where they are dispensed in back-room clinics and swap meets to mostly poor immigrant families who either can’t afford or are not aware of safer alternatives.

An 18-month-old girl died hours after being treated in a back-room clinic in Tustin in February. Oscar King, the registered owner of the gift shop where the clinic was housed, was arrested last month and charged with illegally distributing pharmaceuticals. The woman who oversaw her treatment, Laura Escalante, is wanted on a charge of involuntary manslaughter.

Nelson said the amount of drugs seized at Ramirez’s home and other places last month was “significant.”

He estimated the total value of the drugs at $5,000, but more than the amount, he said, “the important thing is these dangerous drugs that could be sold to the public in Orange County are now out of circulation.”

Times staff writer David Reyes contributed to this report.