The Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Investigations executed multiple search and arrest warrants on Thursday and closed two Valley pharmacies and arrested a pharmacist, and three others, in a federal investigation.
Pharmacist Vilawoe Aku Boadu, 38, is charged with distributing controlled substances, including oxycodone, hydrocodone, alprazolam, and promethazine with codeine.
ABC15 has an exclusive video showing DEA agents raiding her business, Scottsdale Health Pharmacy. Online records show she is also a pharmacist at Estrella Pharmacy in the west Valley, which was also searched and shut down.
DEA special agent Doug Coleman sat down only with ABC15 and explained that one rogue doctor or pharmacist only amps up the opioid epidemic in the state.
"If we get that one bad apple or two bad apples they can reek havoc on a community — reek havoc on a society," Coleman explained. "That's thousands of these powerful pills that are getting diverted to illegal or illegitimate uses and that's causing a huge addiction issue."
The enforcement operation consisted of a total of eight simultaneously executed warrants throughout the Phoenix metro area, including three businesses.
Air15 showed the raid on a house in Surprise, with busted out windows and agents going in and out of the home.
Agents seized 13 handguns, three rifles and a shotgun, several bank accounts and nearly $200,000 in cash and assets, as well as several vehicles including a Mercedes-Benz.
Other subjects arrested today include Michael Karron Holley, 31; Ber Rhondi Patrice Funn-McKinley, 32; and Julian Thomas Petty, 27.
