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The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued the following statement after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) operation led to the convictions of two criminal aliens for running a scheme to manufacture and distribute millions of deadly counterfeit pharmaceuticals.
The fake pills that the defendants tried to sell.On June 1, 2026, a jury in the Southern District of New York convicted Francisco Alberto Lopez Reyes and Edward Eustate Jimenez, two criminal aliens from the Dominican Republic. They ran a scam manufacturing and distributing counterfeit pharmaceutical pills through fake online pharmacies. The pills contained fentanyl and para-fluorofentanyl, which resulted in the death of one victim.
Reyes was found guilty of serving as a principal administrator of a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death, narcotics distribution, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Jimenez was convicted of conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death and narcotics distribution.
“Thanks to the hard work of the brave men and women of ICE law enforcement, these criminal aliens from the Dominican Republic have been brought to justice,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. “These criminals ran a deadly scheme to sell millions of counterfeit pharmaceutical pills and ultimately killed a person with their fentanyl-laced products. Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS will never stop cracking down on drug-trafficking and locking up those who profit off of bringing this poison into our country.”
“A unanimous jury found that Francisco Alberto Lopez Reyes and one of his deputies, Edward Eustate Jimenez, ran a massive, predatory scheme to distribute pills containing fentanyl and other drugs through fake online pharmacies, including pills that tragically killed a United States Army veteran in February 2024,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. “For years, Lopez Reyes was a one-man opioid crisis, duping thousands of victims by distributing millions of pills through the mail from what he thought was the safety of his home in the Dominican Republic. The pills were designed to look like real pharmaceuticals, but they actually contained deadly fentanyl and other controlled substances. The scale of Lopez Reyes’s distribution is staggering, as is the scale of the harm his shipments brought to our communities. A jury has now confirmed what New Yorkers know: if you deal in fentanyl, you deal in death.”
Jimenez entered the country illegally at an unknown date and location. He was encountered by authorities in Arizona in December of 2022, and was RELEASED by the Biden Administration. Reyes was extradited to the U.S. on drug trafficking charges in October of 2024. They will be sentenced at a later date.
Under President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order 14159, DHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are taking a whole of government approach by setting up Homeland Security Task Forces (HSTFs) across the nation. HSTFs will bolster the fight against organized crime as it creates a unified effort to fight the transnational criminal gangs and cartels that have led a reign of terror on our hemisphere.
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