Six individuals from the Houston area have been clapped in irons, facing accusations of steering an upscale drug distribution racket, the U.S. Attorney's Office disclosed. The ring allegedly hawked drugs swiped from a local pharmacy, exploiting the medical-grade narcotics for street-level sale. At the heart of this misbegotten enterprise stood Quineshia Evangeline Hollins, the 33-year-old proprietor of First Choice Rx 245, enmeshed in allegations that she funneled her store's drugs to a stash house network known as "Green Houses" in the Fifth Ward, according to Houston Chronicle.
Arrested after being allegedly caught with a shipment of the drugs, Uzoanuuli Uzoaku WJ Payne, an employee at Hollins' pharmacy, has implicated in the scheme. Charged alongside Hollins are Gerald Dewayne Williams, 65, and Kerry Lewis Walker, 36, who are believed to have sold the narcotics, including potent substances like oxycodone and hydrocodone, right out of the Fifth Ward stash house as the DEA reported.
Further engulfed in these allegations are Trey Demon Neal, 34, and the young James Glen Turk, 21, who now face serious charges in what is shaping up to be a grim tableau of pharmaceutical piracy writ large. All those implicated in this ring are staring down the barrel of up to 20 years in the slammer, not to mention the possibility of a $1 million sting in fines, as we learned from the Attorney General's office.
Houston's very own U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani articulated that thousands of pills had vanished from First Choice Rx without any legitimate trail of prescriptions or an iota of paperwork justifying their dispersal. With these arrests and subsequent seizures, the DEA, alongside the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation, have asserted themselves in the war against illegal drug trade. the Houston Chronicle describes.
