Cousins to plead guilty in supplying drug rehab scam

Two New York cousins identified as the heroin suppliers for the indicted founder of a purported drug rehab center in McKees Rocks have indicated they intend to enter guilty pleas to heroin distribution charges next month in federal court.

William and Pedro Rosario were the drug sources for David Francis, according to information the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said he gave them after his arrest last year.

Francis, 67, the founder of Next Step Foundation and a selfdescribed drug counselor, is under indictment on multiple counts related to distributing heroin under the guise of running a legitimate rehab center.

He is also charged with delivering fentanyl that hurt users who overdosed in Beaver County and Ingram in 2017.

DEA agents said Francis was one of the largest heroin and fentanyl dealers in the region. After several victims were revived with the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan in 2017, they told police that they got their drugs from Francis.

When a DEA task force arrested Francis last October, he told them his sources were “two guys in New York” and named the Rosarios.

Pedro Rosario is a Dominican native living in the Bronx who had been arrested in 2015 in Robinson by state troopers who said they found him with 150 bricks of heroin.

William Rosario, of Manhattan, had also been charged previously in a state case in which troopers said they caught him with heroin in Monroeville.

After those arrests, according to DEA testimony, Francis was able to get them released to his Next Step Recovery House program. He did that by lying to probation officers that Next Step was a nonprofit that helped addicts recover.

In reality, the DEA said, he had switched it from a nonprofit to a forprofit business in 2012 to avoid federal and state scrutiny.

Pedro Rosario is set to plead before U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon on Oct. 5. His cousin will plead Oct. 16 before another federal judge, Joy Flowers Conti.