Ice Cream Man Is Selling More Than Sweet Treats
A new York man, Louis Scala, has been arrested for allegedly selling illegal presription drugs from the back of an ice cream truck. Might seem like small time to some but prosecutors estimate the “business” was making more than $1 Million a year.
Scala did sell ice cream to children from his “Lickity Split” truck along his route and would allegedly stop at “special” spots where customers knew what he was dealing, and the flavor of the day might have been oxycodone.
Scala, 40, is accused of selling more than 40,000 prescription oxycodone pills from his ice cream truck in the city’s Staten Island borough and heading up a 30-person drug ring that included more than two dozen runners to fill fake prescriptions, prosecutors said.
Another suspect, Nancy Wilkins, is accused of using her position as an assistant at a Manhattan orthopedic office to steal blank prescription pads and allegedly sell them for $100 a page, prosecutors said.
The phony prescriptions would be filled by runners who would be paid in cash or in pills, they said.
The ring earned more than $1 million in the past year, sometimes charging up to 20 dollars for a single pill.
Some runners became addicted to the powerful painkiller after working for the ring, which often would raise the price of the pills after customers became dependent, they said.
“This narcotics organization was as predatory as any I have ever seen — in its structure and distribution practices,” Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan said.
“Most of the individuals recruited to fill bogus prescriptions were among society’s most vulnerable — young, financially desperate and addicted to oxycodone,” she said.
This article was written by: Mark Muligan
