Dr. Hector Castro is arrested in an alleged oxycodone ring in 2013. (Credit: Handout)
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Opening statements began Thursday in the trial of a Lower Manhattan doctor accused in an oxycodone smuggling ring that trafficked $10 million worth of drugs across several states.
As WCBS 880’s Irene Cornell reported, Dr. Hector Castro had a confident smirk on is face as Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Bernice Ordonez described him as a man who sat in his Gramercy Park medical center selling oxycodone prescriptions for $125 apiece to pretty much anyone.
Prosecutors claimed Castro worked with an ex-con drug dealer who would supply his friends as patients and runners to fill the prescriptions.
Castro was first arrested in 2013 and charged with 39 counts of criminal sale of a prescription for a controlled substance.
Unbeknownst to Castro, his officer manager Patricia Valera was allegedly operating a separate trafficking ring and getting more money by selling prescriptions to two major dealers in Pennsylvania, Cornell reported.
The two illegally distributed more than 500,000 pills in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, authorities said.
The undercover investigation by New York City’s special narcotics unit was sparked after a pill bottle with Castro’s name was found at the scene of a fatal oxycodone overdose in Middlesex, N.J., in 2011.
Nearly 50 people were arrested in 2013 in connection with the alleged oxycodone ring.
