MIAMI — Two brothers found guilty of buying tens of millions of dollars worth of black-market HIV drugs and reselling them to numerous pharmacies in the Miami area and other locations will be imprisoned for a couple of decades.

Defendants Charles and Patrick Boyd were sentenced to 20 years and 18 years in prison, respectively, on Friday after they were convicted in October of defrauding the Food and Drug Administration. Jurors found that the brothers — accused of conspiring with a South Florida business partner who cut a plea deal — used a wholesale business based in Miami and Maryland to buy more than $90 million of illicit pharmaceutical drugs and distribute them to unwitting customers nationwide.

U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas also ordered the brothers to pay a forfeiture judgment of $21.8 million to the U.S. government, reflecting their unlawful profits.

“They sold black-market HIV drugs with falsified paperwork designed to conceal the drugs’ illicit origin from both customers and the FDA,” prosecutors Alexander Thor Pogozelski and Jacqueline Zee DerOvanesian said in a sentencing memo.

The brothers’ lawyers, Bruce Zimet and William Barzee, sought prison terms between five and 10 years, similar to the punishment for their business partner, Adam Brosius, who was sentenced to eight years in November.

After a six-week trial in Fort Lauderdale federal court, the 12-member jury found the two brothers guilty of conspiring to introduce “misbranded drugs” into the pharmaceutical marketplace between 2020 and 2021, as well as six related charges, including wire-fraud conspiracy, which carries up to 20 years in prison.

The jurors deliberated for two days in late October before reaching their verdicts, which included one acquittal of a wire-fraud count.

The FDA regulates HIV prescription drugs, known as antiretroviral therapy, which are used to manage the virus that causes AIDS. They work by strengthening the immune system and reducing the transmission of HIV to others.

However, “once diverted from the regulated distribution channel, it became difficult for regulators and consumers to know whether a prescription drug was altered, stored in improper conditions, had its potency adversely affected, or was otherwise harmful,” according to an indictment filed against the Boyds and a third defendant in 2024.

Used South Florida wholesale drug companies

The indictment said Charles Boyd, 44, and Patrick Boyd, 47, owned and operated a wholesale company, Safe Chain Solutions, with offices in Miami and Maryland, the brothers’ home state. Their business partner, Brosius, 61, from Palm Beach County, owned part of Safe Chain and another wholesaler, Worldwide Pharma Sales Group, in Delray Beach, which helped find suppliers of HIV drugs and pharmacy customers.

All three men were accused of using their companies to buy the expensive HIV drugs at steeply discounted prices from a network of illicit suppliers that had purchased them from patients who did not consume them. The suppliers of the unregulated prescription drugs were in various states, including New York, Texas and California.

“The diverted prescription drugs that (the men) purchased ... were obtained by the HIV drug suppliers primarily through unlawful diversion ‘buyback’ schemes, in which previously dispensed bottles of prescription drugs were purchased in cash from patients, many of whom were HIV patients,” according to the indictment.

Bought HIV drugs from patients on the street

Among the witnesses who testified at trial: A black-market HIV drug supplier in Queens, New York, who said he obtained the drugs from patients on the street, ripped off the labels and put the bottles into whatever boxes he could find on trash pick-up day — including diaper boxes. He then shipped them to the men’s wholesale companies, Safe Chain and Worldwide Pharma.

The indictment also accused the men of purchasing the counterfeit prescription drugs without proper paperwork, known as T3s/pedigrees, and reselling them to pharmacy customers. The acronym T3s refers to the transaction report, which contains the drug’s pedigree going back to the manufacturer.

At other times, they falsified the paperwork to make the mislabeled prescription drugs look legitimate, including an HIV medicine called “Biktarvy” that was sold to two Miami Beach pharmacies that were not identified in the indictment.

“The falsified information in the T3s/pedigrees concealed the true origin of the diverted prescription drugs from Safe Chain’s customers and made it appear as though these drugs had been acquired legitimately through the regulated supply chain,” the indictment says.

Patients given wrong drugs

In some instances, the Boyd brothers and Brosius “purchased and subsequently redistributed bottles obtained from the HIV drug suppliers that were falsely labeled as containing a specific HIV drug but which did not contain the drug on the label ... and instead contained a different drug,” the indictment says.

One patient testified at the brothers’ trial that he received Seroquel in a bottle that he thought contained his HIV medication. The patient testified that, as a result of taking the antipsychotic drug, he passed out and remained unconscious for 24 hours.

Several pharmacies also complained that the bottles of HIV medication they received from the Boyds had the wrong drugs inside, including Seroquel or pain medication, trial evidence showed.

According to other evidence, on Aug. 14, 2020, Charles Boyd sent his brother Patrick a text message stating, “Patient opened a bottle and it was different medication.”

Then, Boyd texted the brother: “It was from Gentek and sealed,” referring to one of Safe Chain’s HIV drug suppliers in Connecticut.

Boyd followed up with another text message stating, “It was replaced with bipolar med.”

In 2023, one of Gentek’s owners, Lazaro Hernandez, of Miami, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and money-laundering charges and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. According to court records, Gentek sold more than $42 million of black-market HIV drugs to the Boyds.

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