NYC Doctor Busted in $10M Oxycodone Drug Trafficking Ring

A popular New York City doctor and his office manager have been arrested for their involvement in a $10 million Oxycodone trafficking ring that was spread across four states.

Dr. Hector Castro and his office manager Patricia Valera are charged with selling over 500,000 pills for more than 4,500 prescriptions of Oxycodone. Authorities allege the pair ran two separate interstate drug rings over an 18-month time period out of Castro's Manhattan practice at the Itzamna Medical Center in Gramercy Park, a clinic he created in 2001 intended to benefit New York's Hispanic population, according to the New York Daily News.

"This is just drug dealing while wearing a lab coat," said Brian Crowell, a special agent with the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency. "It's no different from a street hood pitching bags of heroin."

The interstate drug trafficking ring, which included Pennsylvania, was "the largest prescription drug-related mass arrest in the state's history," according to Fox News. The 15-month undercover investigation by New York's special narcotics unit lead authorities to arrest a total of 49 people overall in connection with Castro and Valera, including the heads of two prominent Pennsylvania drug trafficking networks. Forty three those arrests were in Pennsylvania alone, authorities said. Police also seized roughly 30 firearms through various strings throughout New York and Pennsylvania.

Among various items collected from Castro's home, police found a lockbox containing $20,000.

Castro is charged with selling 39 prescriptions of the heroin-like prescription drug for $125 a pill, 28 of which he sold to an under cover officer. He plead not guilty in Manhattan Supreme Court to 39 counts of criminal sale of a prescription for a controlled substance. Valera also pleaded not guilty.

Valera was apparently also making money in her own private drug selling ring, apart from Castro. Authorities say she stole prescription sheets from Castro, forged his signature, and later sold the pads to two rival drug traffickers in Pennsylvania.

"A scheme to obtain prescriptions in one state, and fill them and distribute them in another, exposes weakness in our regulatory systems," Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan said in a statement.