Officials provide additional information on pharmacy burglaries in Arkansas

Little Rock, Arkansas – Being the biggest pharmacy burglary case in the Drug Enforcement Administration’s history, an arrest in a burglary case that targeted pharmacies in Arkansas took on even more significance.

After being detained in July, twenty-four co-conspirators who are suspected of taking part in several drugstore break-ins were arraigned in federal court on Thursday.

The new arrests supplement the first eighteen that were arrested in November 2023 as part of the “Rick Off Meds” operation.

Jonathan Ross, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, stated, “We’re ready to tell you about the second phase, which has expanded from 20 pharmacies in Arkansas to now over 200 pharmacies across 30 additional states.”

According to Ross, 42 Houston residents were charged with crimes after cooperating in a series of thefts involving opioid medications.

“In the early morning hours, they would shatter glass at pharmacy locations, low crawl on the floor to evade motion detectors, and systematically remove dangerous opioid benzodiazepines, promethazine with codeine, and other scheduled medication from the pharmacy shelves,” Ross stated.

That led to the sale of thousands of tablets and gallons of promethazine cough syrup on Houston’s streets.

“It is rewarding and personally meaningful when any number of these medications are taken off the streets,” Ross stated. “If they’re not, it’s almost a certainty that they will end up causing death or other injury to the end user.”

Stephen Hofer reports that the DEA has recently detected an increase in pharmacy burglaries.
“Last year alone, 900 burglaries were reported,” said Hofer. Consequently, pharmacies lost about 3.8 million dosages of prohibited medications. This translates into earnings of over $12 million.”

According to Ross, more work needs to be done to get these criminals off the streets.
“It certainly matters greatly to the work of our office and the law enforcement officials that we work with to make a difference,” Ross stated.

The majority of the accused made their appearance on Thursday afternoon in Little Rock, Arkansas’s U.S. District Court; the remaining accused will do so in September.

A single offense of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a prohibited substance was brought against the 24 defendants who were detained in July.