APACHE JUNCTION, AZ — A Valley mother is questioning how her 14-year old son's school handled a near-fatal drug overdose.

The incident did not take place on campus, but the mother who asked to stay anonymous, says her teen overdosed on fentanyl. He told her another student from school had given him the pill.

"He just said he got it from a kid at school, the kid told him it would make him feel good and that was about it," said the woman.

She said her son took just half a pill then went to their neighborhood Walmart with his brother. While they were at the register paying for their products, the teen got dizzy and walked away to the front of the store, where he collapsed by the vending machines.

That is when a Walmart supervisor got the call for help.

"I had my radio on me, and I responded to a code white, which is either an injury or accident," said Joshua Bredvig. He said he had taken a few CPR lessons a decade ago, while in high school, but he knew he just had to act fast.

"I see her son laying there, he was unresponsive, and he was turning blue. He looked lifeless; he looked completely lifeless. I approached him, and I even checked his pulse to see if he was breathing he wasn't, he was turning blue," said Bredvig.

He did chest compressions on the teen as he remembered learning that drugs could transfer from one person to another by performing mouth to mouth CPR.

While performing CPR, Bredvig said he could feel a faint heartbeat, and the teen would gasp for air, then go unconscious again. Medics finally arrived and took over, rushing the boy to the hospital.

"It's not something you want to experience. Seeing your son, at any age, seeing them on the floor with medics doing CPR on him, and then telling you he probably won't make it, it's traumatizing," said the woman.

His mother says doctors initially told her they did not think her son would survive. He was administered Narcan and regained consciousness.

That is when she learned about the pill that almost killed her child.

"They ran toxicology and said that it was a 30 mg Percocet laced with fentanyl," said the mother.

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Addicts and their suppliers get their opioids many ways — overprescribing by health care providers, theft and wholesale illegal trafficking are most common.

But as a recently unsealed federal indictment reveals, thousands of Americans get those drugs and others by simply ordering them via illegal online pharmacies.

Five Argentine men who prosecutors say used Americans to set up websites, do online marketing and launder millions of dollars in illegal profits from the sale of drugs from Romania and India now face charges in Milwaukee.

Scott Simons is a Greenfield police officer and member of a local Drug Enforcement Administration task force focused on pharmaceutical diversions. His sworn affidavit in support of a search warrant for emails lays out much of how the case unfolded but does not specify why or how local authorities came to lead the investigation and prosecution.

U.S. Attorney Matthew Krueger declined to discuss the pending case.

According to court records, GOLDPHARMA24.com, 24hsmeds.com and several other sites connected to the Argentines' operation sold oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, tapentadol, alprazolam, amphetamine, diazepam (Valium), methylphenidate, tramadol, carisoprodol (Soma) and zolpidem without prescriptions to buyers throughout the U.S.

As part of a DEA investigation started in February 2015, agents made undercover orders of their own and would get the drugs, usually accompanied with a fake prescription in the agent's name signed by "Dr. Ladislav Smercek."

Agents also examined thousands of email and phone records that revealed the complex web of companies, websites, internet service providers and individuals who ran the operation headed by "Biff Tannen" and his affiliate group.

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Tannen turned out to be an alias for Luciano Brunetti, one of the five Argentines named in the indictment and the only who remained at large as of last week.

Along the way, agents gained cooperation from a Maryland man, Anthony Hardy, who said he'd been involved in internet pharmacies since about 2000, registering thousands of domain names and creating websites for sellers. Hardy said he never played any role in taking orders or shipping drugs, but earned a commission based on the volume of sales through sites he created for the Biff Affiliate Group


Brunetti and his crew used a Chicago-area firm called 7Search to promote their sites and generate traffic, according to court records. 7Search shut down in 2017, in the middle of the GOLDPHARMA24 investigation, according to internet traffic industry reports.

Many of the profits of the operation were laundered through an Atlanta company called Global Transaction Services — until the head of that business was indicted on money laundering charges in May 2016.

It appears the new way to wash the profits was to buy Florida real estate. The indictment seeks forfeiture of 28 residential properties, mostly condominiums, from Orlando to Miami.

In one unspecified year, the records state, the Biff Affiliate Group made about $6.7 million in sales of controlled substances and pharmaceuticals to U.S. customers alone.

A confidential source not part of that group told investigators in early 2017 that he ran what appeared to be a different illegal internet pharmacy. He said that between 2012 and 2015 he wired more than $1 million to the same Romanian source of the drugs used by the Biff Tannen group.

Simons' affidavit lists names of several sources of drugs in Romania and India, but so far, none of those people have been charged, or if they have, the charges have not been made public.


Four of the five men, ranging in age from 30 to 51, named in the indictment were arrested in Argentina last month. U.S. officials will seek to have them extradited to face charges in Milwaukee federal court.

Contact Bruce Vielmetti at (414) 224-2187 or bvielmetti@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ProofHearsay.


https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2019/04/08/international-online-pharmacy-ring-busted-milwaukee/3352337002/?fbclid=IwAR0Uytjvjd9sxBZYXirYCcLb5jnYK21LGKOCPFBDtMMFuWSkSqbSZyLqn6Y