Prosecutor: Men made dangerous pills in building's boiler room

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Authorities seized pills in the Bronx. (Office of Special Narcotics)

Authorities charged three men from the Bronx, including the superintendent of an apartment building, with running a pill-making operation using deadly amounts of heroin and fentanyl.

The DEA and the city's special narcotics prosecutor said the suspects used a pill-press machine to make tens of thousands of pills with a street value of about a $100,000 per month.  

The pills were designed to look like oxycodone and ecstasy but are actually a dangerous concoction of pure methamphetamine, heroin, and fentanyl. Fentanyl is approximately 50 times more potent than heroin.

"Narcotics traffickers have long exploited the nation's high demand for pain pills, a powerful gateway to addiction," Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan said. "But this investigation reveals an even more deviant scheme—an organization creating and distributing counterfeit pills with highly potent and lethal compounds, manufactured in an apartment right next to the boiler room."

Roberto Castillo, the superintendent of an apartment building on Morris Avenue in Fordham Heights, Agustin Vasquez Chavez, and Yefri Hernandez-Ozoria ran the operation out of a studio apartment and the boiler room area, authorities said. If convicted, the men each faces up to 20 years in prison.