On Friday, September 22, 2017, Acting U.S. Attorney Abe Martinez announced that a 47-year-old Mexican national illegally residing in Conroe had been convicted of conspiring to smuggle prescription medications into the United States, as well as delivering misbranded drugs with the intent to defraud. 47-year-old Carolina Aguilar Rodriguez confessed to purchasing prescription medications from individuals that were not licensed wholesale distributors.
She knew that the medications had entered the United States illegally from El Salvador and Mexico. The drugs were not manufactured or approved for use in the United States. Simultaneously, the drugs should not have been present in the country and did not contain the appropriate labels or warnings to protect American consumers.
One of the medications, Diprospan, was actually counterfeit and did not contain the active ingredients listed on the label. The defendant admitted to selling, dispensing and administering the drugs from her store Naturavida, which was located on Blalock Road in Houston. She sold the medications to customers that did not have the necessary prescriptions.
The drugs peddled by Carolina Rodriguez included antibiotics, erectile dysfunction drugs, hormones, pain killers, and more. The defendant is not a pharmacist or a physician. She also hid the fact that the drugs were smuggled into the United States from her customers. Rodriquez’s guilty plea was accepted by Judge Melinda Harmon. The defendant’s sentencing has been scheduled for January 26, 2018.