IRS tries to cut flow of pills from Las Vegas
Danny Ramos Williams and fiancee Sukita M. Rayford boarded a flight to Las Vegas at John Glenn Columbus International Airport on Dec. 6, 2013, with $26,000 and change.
The couple didn’t plan to try their luck at the casino tables and slots. They already had scored big selling thousands of oxycodone pills to street-level dealers in Columbus, federal authorities said.
Four months later, Dontonyo “Don Don” Courtney, a courier for Williams, was stopped at John Glenn after arriving from Las Vegas. Federal agents seized 1,855 oxycodone pills, some secreted in Mentos gum containers. Last December, U.S. Postal inspectors found 1,494 pills concealed in baby powder in a package bound for Columbus.
All were traveling the Las Vegas-Columbus trade route that has helped feed Ohio’s growing opioid addiction.
“They brought hundreds of thousands of pills here from Vegas” before law enforcement put them out of business in 2015, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Martinez, who prosecuted a second opioid trafficking group in 2016 operated by brothers Marcus Pryor and
Marquis Pryor.
Martinez’s colleague Mike Hunter led the Williams prosecution. Danny Williams, 30, was sentenced to 7
years in prison last summer, and Sukita Rayford Williams, 44, (they married in 2014), received a six-year sentence in January. Courtney, 22, was sentenced to nearly three years in prison last summer.
Authorities hesitated to call Las Vegas a pill pipeline for Columbus. Most opioids find their way to users through legitimate or illicit prescriptions, the medicine cabinet, and that guy who can score a few off an elderly relative or a friend recovering from an injury.
Still, the Williams and Pryor groups used Columbus as a transfer station from Las Vegas to central and southern Ohio, which has been hit hard by the opioid scourge. But why Las Vegas? Martinez points to a map of the U.S. The higher the number of high-dose opioids prescribed, the darker the state. Nevada, at No. 3, is black. Ohio, closer to the national average, is gray.
Court documents say Sukita Williams sent several relatives to a notorious Las Vegas physician, Victor Bruce, to obtain oxycodone prescriptions. The 30 mg pills were purchased for $10 to $13 each and resold on the street for $16 to $20.
Bruce was sentenced to almost four years in prison in 2014.
“I can’t give you a definitive answer, but our culture is based on money and instant gratification,” said Dr. Mel Pohl, medical director at the Las Vegas Recovery Center. That fosters addictions for alcoholism, gambling and drugs. He estimated that the center sees 500 to 600 patients a year.
Las Vegas has a substantial elderly population living on subsistence incomes, Pohl said. “There are lots of grandmas selling oxycodone to make the rent,” he said.
Medicaid recipients in particular can be enticed by the quick profit in selling opioids, said Kevin Doyle, special agent with the Internal Revenue Service.
“You’re going to pay almost nothing for 120 oxys on your Medicaid card. On the street, for 120, you’re going to pay $2,400, $2,500,” said Doyle, who investigated the Williams and Pryor groups.
Both Pryor brothers have pleaded guilty to trafficking opioids and money laundering. They’re awaiting sentencing in federal court in Columbus.
Like the Williams duo, the Pryors recruited family, friends and others to transport the pills from Las Vegas to Columbus and money the other way.
The groups used “cash funnels” to transfer drug proceeds through accounts set up at banks with branches in both cities. Money deposited at a Columbus bank was withdrawn the next business day, or sooner, at the Las Vegas branch.
“This business model is especially susceptible to what we do,” Doyle said. “From my desk I can get tax returns, flight records, prepaid card purchases, bank accounts.”
“If someone is making 20 to 30 trips to Vegas in the span of a year or two, it’s kind of suspicious,” Martinez said.
He said the U.S. attorney’s office in Columbus has charged 12 people in the Las Vegas-Columbus oxycodone cases. Ten pleaded guilty to trafficking and moneylaundering charges. Eight were sentenced to terms ranging from probation to 7 years in prison. Two are awaiting trial.
The groups weren’t exactly drug cartels with sophisticated methods of laundering their millions and their names, Martinez said. Sukita Williams was the cardholder for flights for more than 20 couriers. She had 14 prescriptions from Bruce filled in one year totaling 2,000 oxycodone pills. She had $80,000 in a bank account in 2012 but no legitimate means of income or tax filing for that year.
Yet when agents tried to seize property in the Williams and Pryor cases, they didn’t find expensive houses or troves of cash, Martinez said.
“They spent it all. Either put it back in the operation or just blew it,” he said.
Opioids are front and center for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said Mike Bulgrin, assistant special agent in charge of counties in the court’s southern Ohio district.
“It’s kind of been our No. 1 issue because it’s killing a lot of people,” Bulgrin said.
“You’re going to pay almost nothing for 120 oxys on your Medicaid card. On the street, for 120, you’re going to pay $2,400, $2,500.”
—Kevin Doyle, special agent with the IRS