A Cuban music promoter is being accused of playing a role in a multimillion dollar scheme selling “misbranded” psychiatric, cancer and HIV medications to pharmacies across the country.
Boris Arencibia, 50, was arrested at his Miami-Dade home on Friday morning, according to an indictment. Arencibia is charged with conspiracy to deliver misbranded and adulterated drugs, conspiracy to traffic in medical products with false documentation and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Arencibia is the owner and president of South Florida-based Caribe Promotions. He has represented musicians and boxers, including Cuban professional boxer Guillermo Rigondeaux. The promoter caught the ire of Miami’s Cuban community after acknowledging that he was an organizer of the Santa María Music Fest in Cuba, which was deemed controversial by some due to its financial links to the Cuban military.
According to the indictment filed in the Southern District of Florida, Arencibia conspired with Lazaro Hernandez and about a dozen others from 2013 through 2019 to buy expensive prescription medications from people who obtained them through theft, burglary or health care fraud. Hernandez, a Miami businessman, was arrested in 2022 after being accused of directing the $230 million scheme.
Arencibia, the indictment says, used two corporations — Quality Supplement Distributors and LDD Distributors Inc., which he registered in Connecticut under somebody else’s name — to launder about $400,000.
Defense attorney Frank Quintero, who is representing Arencibia, told the Miami Herald he has been aware that the promoter has been under federal investigation for about a year. Arencibia, Quintero said, offered to surrender but was never given the opportunity to do so.
“The charges were unsealed on Friday and we will be investigating the allegations against him,” Quintero said. “Mr. Arencibia is presumed innocent until proven guilty and we look forward to clearing his name.”
The FBI hasn’t responded to the Miami Herald’s request for comment on Arencibia’s arrest.
Allegations unveiled years before?
A lawsuit filed in 2021 in the Eastern District of New York outlines similar allegations. It also names Hernandez as a defendant — and Arencibia as a material witness.
In a complaint, pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences claimed that more than 200 individuals and companies across the U.S. were passing off antipsychotic pills as the company’s HIV medications. Attorneys for Gilead Sciences said they sought to “put an immediate and permanent stop to [the defendants’] knowing and willful sale, marketing, and distribution of counterfeit prescription drugs.”
In April 2023, Arencibia was served with a subpoena, which required him to testify in the case. Quintero represented Arencibia in the suit.
A history with the feds?
Friday wasn’t the first time Arencibia has caught the attention of federal prosecutors.
In 2000, Arencibia was accused of possessing equipment that could create fraudulent credit cards, according to Southern District of Florida court records. He took a plea deal and was sentenced to six months in federal prison followed by three years of probation.
Arencibia will appear in Miami federal court for a detention hearing on Feb. 7. If convicted, he could face up to 40 years behind bars.
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