A Miami man who helped carry out the theft of about $90 million in prescription drugs from a warehouse in Connecticut pleaded guilty Monday to similar thefts, acknowledging that Lilly wasn't the first drug company he targeted.
Amed Villa, a Cuban citizen, pleaded guilty in July to theft and conspiracy charges stemming from his participation in the theft at pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co. in Enfield, CT. Thieves broke into the pharmaceutical company's Enfield warehouse in 2010 by scaling an exterior wall and cutting a hole in the roof. They lowered themselves to the floor and disabled alarms before using a forklift to load pallets of drugs into a getaway vehicle. The stolen drugs, which included antidepressants, antipsychotics and a chemotherapy drug used to treat lung cancer, were recovered last year from a storage facility in Florida, authorities said.
At the hearing Monday, Villa, 49, also admitted a role in the August 2009 theft of more than $13.3 million in pharmaceuticals from the GlaxoSmithKline warehouse in Colonial Heights, VA. He also pleaded guilty to the January 2011 theft of $8 million in cellular telephones and multimedia tablets from a Quality One Wireless warehouse in Orlando, FL, and the March 2011 theft of more than $1.5 million in cigarettes from a warehouse in Leitchfield, KY. Read more
