NYC Man Convicted Of Running Massive Black Market ‘Pill Mill’: Feds

NEW YORK CITY — A Queens man imported and repackaged millions of prescription pills from India to illegally sell by mail across the United States, federal authorities said.

Ezhil Sezhian Kamaldoss, 43, of Richmond Hill, was found guilty Monday of conspiring to distribute opioids and illegal drugs and money laundering.

The trial centered around accusations that Kamaldoss headed a massive “pill mill” out of a Jamaica warehouse, authorities said.

With the verdict, Kamaldoss is now a convicted drug deal who faces up to 50 years in prison, said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.

“He lined his pockets off theblack-market sales of millions of illegal opioids and misbranded prescription pills without regard for the harm caused by the abuse of these highly addictive and dangerous drugs,” Peace said in a statement.

Authorities said Kamaldoss and others working for him ran a transnational drug-trafficking scheme between May 2018 and August 2019.

They imported misbranded prescription drugs — including millions of pills of Tramadol, a synthetic opioid — into Queens, in part by bribing workers at John F. Kennedy Airport, authorities said. Once the pills arrived, the group repackaged the pills at a warehouse in Jamaica before they sent them by mail to customers across the nation, prosecutors said.

Kamaldoss laundered the black market proceeds by reinvesting in his business and paying shipping costs, authorities said. At one point, he paid off about $200,000 in Federal Express costs in exchange for more pills, prosecutors said.

Evidence at the trial included shipping packages, spreadsheets recovered from email accounts detailing drug orders and an audio recording made by a confidential informant of another man — Velaudapillai Navaratnarajah — of a discussion about the number and type of pills to package into envelopes, prosecutors said.

Navaratnarajah pleaded guilty in June 2022 drug conspiracy charges and awaits sentencing, prosecutors said.

Kamaldoss will be sentenced at a future date.