A Boston cop goes to prison for being muscle for drug dealers, and a Miami-area cop and two prison guards get caught up in a massive Oxycontin and health fraud scandal. Let's get to it:
In Boston, a former Boston police officer was sentenced July 29 [12] to 11 years in federal prison for acting as an enforcer for drug dealers. Former Officer Jose Ortiz, 46, pleaded guilty in a conspiracy to extort $265,000 from a man targeted by Colombian drug dealers working in the area. In the scheme, dealers approached a man seeking people who would work in their drug sales business, then told him one of the people he recommended had ripped them off and he was responsible. In August 2006, Ortiz showed up in uniform at the man's workplace, saying he was there on behalf of the dealers, who would kill the man if he did not pay $265,000. In May 2007, the man, who had gone to the FBI with the threats, gave Ortiz $4,000 in cash and four kilos of cocaine in a Revere parking lot. The FBI then swooped down on Ortiz and arrested him.
In Miami, a Hialeah police officer and two Miami-Dade corrections officers were arrested Wednesday [13] along with 59 other people in an illegal Oxycontin and healthcare fraud ring. Fifty-two of the 62 people arrested were Miami-Dade employees, including 17 bus drivers, 10 bus attendants, five school security guards, and six garbage men. Hialeah Police Officer Danette Dell and jail guards Lori Lucky and Reginald Fletcher are among those facing grand theft and other charges in the scam, in which government employees used their health benefits to buy Oxycontin, then resell the pills on the black market.