everybody ready okay all right uh good afternoon I'm penel County Sheriff Bob Walter and um here to announce uh the culmination of an investigation the arrest of several individuals today on drug related charges uh since last fall Sheriff's Office detectives have been conducting an investigation of a prescription drug ring operating in the St Petersburg area the investigation began when detectives arrested Rory Darden on drug charges and at that time he had heroin cocaine in 74 Xanax pills in his possession we learned that Darden was obtaining the pills through his sister rakia Darden who worked as a medical assistant at Medical home doctors located at 2198 15th Avenue South in St Petersburg Ria Darden worked at Medical home doctors between November 2013 and February of 2016 medical home doctors is the medical practice of Dr jadab Yu Zoho and I want to stress that Dr Yoho was not involved in any criminal activity and that he fully cooperated with investigators during our investigation in fact Dr yuzoh is as much a victim in this as anybody else the operation was spearheaded by rakia Darden her brother Rory Darden Steven Ford Olympia Hines and Fitzgerald Wright and they are the people who are at the top of this chart here uh on my left between September 2014 and probably earlier but that's the uh latest date that we able to establish that this activity was occurring but between September of 2014 and January of 2016 Rory Darden Ford Hines and Wright acted as recruiters and solicited 36 individuals who are the individuals listed here on these charts to provide their names and then go to various penis County pharmacies and pick up Xanax prescriptions that been had that had been called in for them after Rory Darden Ford Hines and Wright provided the names to rakia Darden she used her position in Dr yoho's office to call in Andor write and facts the XEX prescriptions to the individuals in their names at 41 different pelis County pharmacies the individuals would then pick up the drugs and give them to Rory Darden Ford Hines and Wright who would sell them on the streets these Runners were paid cash Andor in drugs for providing their names and picking up the drugs at the pharmacies so these folks acted as recruiters of these people here they gave the names to rakia she would call in the prescriptions they go to thees they pick up the drugs they would give the drugs back to these people who would then either pay them with some the drugs or money and put the rest of the drugs on the street here in pelis County Rory Darden Ford Hines and Wright and Ria Darden also themselves picked up fraudulent prescriptions at various pharmacies for a total of 67 times that they did it personally Dr yuz Dr Yoho cooperated as I said with detectives and at one point during the investigation we installed video surveillance in his office and obtained video evidence of rakia Darden faxing fraudulent prescriptions to these 41 pharmacies that video was matched up with video from the cooperating pharmacies confirming the runner who actually picked up the fraudulent prescription all of these prescriptions as I said were for Xanax 2 milligrams with each prescription being written for 90 pills each and some having refills we know that during this time period that Ria Darden called in or faxed 41177 fraudulent prescriptions that members of this distribution organization obtained more than 37,000 pills that sold on the streets of pelis County for well over $200,000 Xanax right now is going to the street uh depending upon who's buying and selling and exactly where for between $5 and $15 a pill these 41 suspects face over 200 charges including obtaining controlled substances by fraud schemed to defraud uttering forged instruments and off unlawful use of communication devices more charges are anticipated as the investigation is ongoing and we're exploring racketeering charges against the main suspects detectives began locating the suspects and making arrest yesterday and currently we have 23 of the suspect suspects in custody uh all of the main suspects have criminal histories uh with the exception of one detectives will continue their efforts tonight and throughout the weekend to locate and arrest the remaining 18 uh individuals as we talked about previously a couple weeks ago we're seeing an uptick in the illegal demand for Xanax here locally in pelis county and I want to remind the public of the warnings we gave a couple of weeks ago about the Xanax that is mixed with fentanyl that's on the streets of pelis County today and again remind people that buying these drugs on the street can literally kill them the recreational use of drugs is dangerous and even what some may consider to be less dangerous than others like Xanax is still causing people to overose and die people like rakia Darden Rory Darden Ford Hines and Wright who put over 37,000 illegal pills on the streets of pelis County need to beeld accountable for their actions and they are being held accountable today so with that I'll take any questions that you have sherff you believe that started working at this place with the goal of establishing this kind of thing or is something that kind of yeah it's hard to tell because she's not cooperating she won't talk to us um left the uh Medical Practice there abruptly in February and she'd been working there since 2013 and so whether she did this specifically with the intent of setting yourself up to work there and engage in it or whether it was opportunity after she started working there that's something that we still trying to determine and figure out as we proceed with the investigation as these people are uh arrested and we'll see if any of them are going to cooperate and we'll get more information about that but that's certainly a looming question we don't have the answer to it the doctor hear this you this very much so and and of course disappointed and you know he's worked hard to build his medical practice down there and he doesn't spend a lot of time in the office and so there was a trust Factor there as well with her and of course she violated that trust of the doctor and took advantage of that situation uh to when he was out of the office uh to use his prescription pad to use his office to use his authority as a position and calling these prescriptions so yeah he was stunned and disappointed and of course concerned about it and again very Cooperative can you describe the practice Yeah I mean from what I know about it I believe it's a a medical practice that that focuses on a lot of home healthare there there go the name and I think that's why he spends a lot of time but I believe it's just a general Internal Medical Practice go out doctors go out and patients home I believe that's the the primary way the practice Works although you know they do see some patients in there apparently but primarily it's out of the office and that's why he was out of the office so much um and he you know she was a medical assistant she was there she was in the office she had access to everything and um exploited it sounds like this was a very organized operation yeah and it's not you know CH It's Not Unusual in these things to have this structure where and we saw it many years ago where when we had the oxycodone Etc with the opiate based prescription drug explosion that we had and the same model was used back then where you had uh people that had access to the fraudulent scripts they were getting them in some way and then they had uh recruiters who would go out and get people to uh use their names go pick up the drugs because back in that day you know going back a few years ago there was a number of ways they were getting them but one of the ways was with fraudulant or Forge scripts or getting access to doctor's prescription pads and those types of things so um these are uh organized groups it is organized criminal activity it's very deliberate it's very systemic and they had a plan and they were executing the plan and knew exactly what they were doing so this is not something that was casual this is something that was deliberate which goes to the question uh as to whether or not she purposely set herself up working there or after she got established there she decided to concoct the scheme with her brother and others because we're talking about yeah and you know and and you would think wanting to take care of people not harm them right um so obviously these people don't care thing they care about is what a lot of people who are involved in drug activity care about that's making a buck and they don't care what happens to anybody else and you know especially with what we're seeing now with this you know Xanax on the street and um so it's it's all dangerous stuff and people need to know that um you know these people people like this are just praying on them it's not good where did this group kind of rank know how large of a bik this takes out of theu yeah I think it's I think it's pretty substantial because of the the number of pills and the number of people involved in what they're doing uh you know in this area of prescription drugs is annex Etc now we had Rory and again he or when he was first arrested he had some cocaine and some heroin on them uh but his primary uh drug of choice was the Xanax as far as selling it concerned and just and distributing it uh but in that area of selling Xanax and prescription drugs this is a very substantial organization and is very substantial effort as you can see when you're putting it and I low balled it um you know here I mean it's that can tell you for a fact that the drugs are going for between five and $15 a pill and if you do the math way I added it up there I said over 200,000 and a low ball it more towards the $5 a pill but a lot of it's probably going for more than that so they were just out there making Handover fist money um at the expense of others and she's exploiting her position and they go out and they use these people and a lot of these people um you know these people down here at the bottom end is is that they have minimal culpability I mean they know they're doing something wrong some of them are probably and users and these are people they're just the the runners these people are the facilitators and she has access to the method that they can get the pills so most of these people are you know lowlevel probably consumers of the drugs themselves unfortunately so they didn't know what was going on oh they knew what was going on oh yeah absolutely they knew it was going on because they were either being paid in drugs or money for it they knew it was illegal but again a lot of these people most likely is is going to turn out to probably have a drug problem themselves and they're just use it as a way to to uh to make a quick Buck um and and for some of these people um there was you know SE several of them that had that did it uh five six seven times so these weren't one-time Deals they had a couple of them that were you know one-timers but they kept going back again because they were being paid over and over again so they would recruit them get them to do it multiple times and keep growing the organization as much as they could what took you guys up are you surprised the number of people um you know this is no because as these groups go this is you know they keep recruiting and what because they operated for so long you know this is going on that we can establish since the fall of 2014 through January 16 and and if we hadn't stopped it um with this and I think one of the reasons we don't know for sure but I believe one of the reasons why she left abruptly in February of 16 if she got wind that something was up uh but you know this couldn't continue to grow and grow in mushroom and you know they would continue to get recruiters and she had a a thing going a lucrative thing going and I as we have seen these in the past I'm not surprised to see it this size uh this is a pretty large one but not shocking because you got to have all these recruiters they don't you know they get smart about it they don't want to just have these same person that's why they use 41 differentes throughout pelis County and they're all mainstream pharmacies who had nothing to do with this CVS Publix Walmart wal for thees they were using thees had nothing to do and the phes are actually doing their due diligence they would call back to uh the office to the doctor's office to verify the prescription but guess what it's Fox watching the hen house because you know the person they're calling back to verify was the one that was calling in the the fraudulent script to begin with so you know they had a they had a pretty good thing going you you B those FKS out they're not arrested miners or what no only because they're not in custody yet those are the people that are not in custody um and those are actual pictures of them just from other mon yes yeah yes yes and those are actual pictures of them um and everybody in here um who is not blurred uh is uh in custody except for Ford is not up here and right we're still looking for them let ask a question you know people may say like well why did you wait for it to be 37,000 pills why don't you swe and stop at the well some of this is historical so is that the investigation really didn't begin until the fall of last year and so we were doing some of it as we were figuring it out as it was ongoing and going forward but a bulk of the charges or for activity that occurred before we got involved in it so we certainly don't want to do that but you got to prove the case and then as you prove the case probably the bulk of the 37,000 pills occurred in that period of time before we became aware of it and started the investigation and of course and putting it together and then one of the things we did just to build the case and get the evidence was to put that camera in there with doctor with the doctor's to see her doing it and then matching it up and you got to do the investigation so um overall given the complexity of it and what we had to do and uncover and investigate we acted pretty quickly so I think that's that's an important point is is that we we wouldn't allow this activity to go on and put people in Jeopardy a lot of it's going back historically yeah it's oh it's a lot to be on the street no doubt you know they surpris call when they say well you know of course when you're knocking on people's doors and you're arresting them like this they're you know surprised to a degree but they all know that they're involved in criminal activity so they just wait for that day to happen for a lot of them um and of course I'm not going to get into you know who's cooperating who's not you know at this point so uh but but I want to stress the investigation's ongoing it's not over with so how so so in in this so far I think I gave you the number here of um exactly who's been arrested um we have 41 toal total 23 are in custody and 18 are still yet to be taken into custody sheriff is there any insurancea or they all bu cash no as far as we know it's all cash no how do you know that these other folks are involved names investigation well how we know they're involved so I mean to put the case together so we find out this is the activity this is the uh method in which it's occurring and Dr yo y Zoho said he knows none of these people none of these people are patients in this practice never uh evaluated them never treated them never wrote any prescriptions for him they he doesn't know them at all and so you've got a prescription coming from his practice under his authority being called in by his office to a pharmacy for these prescriptions of what she said are totally invalid and then we've got the video of her doing it we've got communication to thees and they're in these people's real names and then they're going into thees and we've got them on video in many cases going to thees and picking them up and just matching it up that way so that's how you know we know and then from others because there are some people who are cooperating is is that then they were telling us how it worked and how they got recruited and again the majority of them and from what we know were paid either with and each prescription was for 90 pills so some of them might take some of the pills off the top that would be their payment some of them would get paid in cash uh we had a couple that told us that they were being paid because they'd give them money for their rent that kind of thing so these people were again they were conduit they're being used we don't know of any of these people that were actually out on the street selling it they'd get the prescription give it to give the 90 pills plus uh to these people get compensated for it and then they call them again hey I need you to do it again so it' be that type of a cycle that was going on something you all post on your Facebook page about the girl whated you add well because the the extensive un fortunate um uh just misinformation that's going on out there uh by a number of people with this false narrative uh which is just nonsense and so you know when we put out those media packets is that you all were provided with all of the video but unfortunately some media Outlets only played one portion of one video of one Deputy who happened to be on a perimeter is very misleading in some media outlets in their captions in their narratives said that this calls into question and people are calling into question whether the deputies went in the pond and that's just wrong because that was one Deputy who was on a perimeter who he never said was a deputy that went in the water and there was probably well over 15 deputies out there and people are saying and then you've got some really irresponsible people who are writing articles and putting them all over social media and Facebook's blowing up with it saying that uh I li and that we are not telling the truth about the deputies that went in and the packet that we have has information in it in the uh in reports that were written by the deputies who took their gun belts off took their clothes off and went in the water those deputies aren't lying and never in the investigated reports that you all got if anybody take a chance to read them they'd see that they're there and then you got video on there that shows those same deputies walking around without their gun belts on without their clothes on and deputies don't just take their clothes off for uh you know any reason in the middle of the night at 4:00 in the morning took their clothes off because they went in the water trying to rescue those girls so what's being uh promate out there is a false narrative and a flat out lie and we put that out there because there was so much of it being said to take that snippet and show there is video If people care to look for it and watch it that supports what we said I don't think we need the video uh you know if we've come to a point in this world where if itless it's on video it didn't happen then that's sad uh but to the extent that the video confirms what we said that's why we put it out there now that video read some of the comments some of the people saying the were kind of walking by all relaxed they didn't they like they been in the water I don't care what those people say that's a bunch of nonsense and they need to stop it because it's a bunch of junk those deputies went in that water and tried to save those girls and at their own Peril but when they go into that water and it's all sludge and they're up to their knees and they get tangled in Weeds and everything else um they don't need to die over it and they made a decision one of the deputies that went in is on our dive team he's trained in that and he made a decision it's too dangerous for me to go out there so I don't really care what they say I really don't you know they can make these bald wild allegations all day long fact is three girls 14 and 15 4:00 in the morning in a stolen car running from the police and the three of them combined had seven prior arrests for stealing cars in the last year that's the problem we need to focus on this isn't a problem with the Sheriff's Office isn't a problem with the police this is a problem with those kids engaged in criminal conduct running from the police the police tried to go in the water and save their life and they couldn't do it and everybody who is uh uh saying these guys didn't do their jobs or we're providing false information needs to stop that irresponsible rhetoric because it's nonsense one quick question adding on to that um I know sometimes seen you all take pictures um just for evidence purposes is there anything showing deputies with maybe money clothing obviously like you said no we why would we do that why would we do that it's not evidence of anything why would we do that I believe that um what we've seen on Facebook just from reading some of the comments um you see people saying well like she mentioned it's their their clothing is still clean maybe they thought about going in but didn't is there anything that that can prove without a doubt you know these deputies at least one went in that water did you read their report I have not seen yet read their report the deputy said they went in the water they got tangled in the weeds it was muddy they sunk down and they felt it was too dangerous to proceed read their report read the D team logs that show there's zero visibility what the conditions were in the water it's all there attorney I'm done with it there's nothing they can challenge all they want and you know they're trying to in the media they don't have any any cause of action against us they don't have a viable claim against us they don't have anything other than this really irresponsible rhetoric and this false narrative that they decide to keep going why don't we worry about why these girls were doing what they were doing and try and prevent any other kids from going down that path let's focus on fixing the problem we have in pelis County with 2,800 stolen cars in a year and 1,500 of them coming out of the city of St Petersburg and all these kids Last Friday Night Last Last Friday Night the auto theft task force in St Petersburg middle of the night 1:00 in the morning five kids 13 three 14y olds and a 15-year-old they're in a stolen car they run from the police same story they wreck they get out they run K9 chases them down those five kids one of those girls 14 years old she got out of a DJJ residential program Friday afternoon on a weekend pass Friday night she's out stealing cars in between those five kids 13 three 14 year olds and a 15y old they had 63 prior arrests in the last 18 months that's what we need to be talking about and people need to stop saying that these deputies didn't do their job these deputies did their job that's a that's a problem same night up in Clearwater the same night four kids in the city of Clearwater stolen car 14 and 15 years old between them 25 prior arrest Saturday night into Sunday morning this week St Petersburg 15 years old and the last year he's been arrested 15 times five of them for auto theft that's the problem so what's being done a lot of things are being done to combat it the auto theft task force and we're putting together an initiative to go out and deal with these kids the highest recidivist and we had meetings on it this week and there's a lot of action being done by law enforcement and as we put it together together we'll announce it at the right time but we are working on it and we're moving forward back to drug share is there [Music] anyway into the fanol hybrid we're working on it um you we've been in touch with the authorities out in San Francisco uh where they've had a big uptick of it as well uh we're working with other law enforcement agencies in the Tampa Bay Area uh fortunately since that nine uh there has not been another Xanax fentanyl death in pen County which is a good thing so maybe by getting that word out has helped a little bit but that investigation is ongoing do you think they've disappeared from this area that you know it's hard to tell you know I hope you know but it's hard to tell um and only time will tell and unless we can uncover it investigatively I I've seen some information and you know my biggest concern on that was is it being manufactured here in pelis county or in the Tampa Bay area is it coming from elsewhere we've seen some information and I don't know for sure that perhaps it was coming out of Mex Mexico um but the thing I really want to make sure is we don't have somebody uh in a lab here with pill presses that's making it here put on the street uh because we need to approach it differently if that was occurring so again it's still a very active investigation and uh we're trying to get more information do the best we can with it can you us any video that you took inside that doctor's office 30 seconds of it yeah you know we we had tried to do that in fact you know I was going to try and have that here for you today and it's in a in an Evidence system and we just couldn't get it pulled out uh I I'll ask again and see if there's any way we can do it it would have delayed us here today uh but I don't have a problem with it if we can if we can get it I just don't know we can get it to you timely enough for your uh you know for your newscast yeah we'll work with you and see what we can get for you we'll see what we can do are you hoping that this a message to people who are doing this well of course you know I mean people need to know we're out there we're conducting these investigations and people are selling dope on the streets need to stop you know and that uh there's consequences for doing it and that people are held accountable that's why I said you know people these folks need to be accountable for their actions even the low level people um but most especially the people who are the ring leaders who are recruiting uh these Runners and then making all the money off of it and getting these drugs and pushing them out there on the street U sure there needs to be a strong message to people that um they don't need to be doing this activity and if you do it and you make that bad decision there's going to be consequences for it anybody got anything else okay thanks thanks yeah um between five and $5 oh in the pharmacy oh like I believe it's like 80 cents so it's it's relatively cheap