NEW YORK CITY — Twenty-one people were arrested Thursday in New York City for selling prescription drugs through Craigslist.
Undercover narcotics investigators answered the ads and ended up buying handfuls of prescription painkillers for a few hundred dollars.
Police say some of the sellers turned out to be run-of-the-mill drug dealers also peddling cocaine and heroin.
But many were more mainstream, including a New York University graduate student, a financial adviser and a 62-year-old freelance photographer.
Bridget Brennen, a special narcotics prosecutor, says many of the ads blatantly described the drugs in the posts.
“I think the thing that makes today’s indictments that were announced different is that the sales were very, very blatant. The names of the prescription drugs that were being sold were actually used in the postings. It was very obvious what was going on. The undercovers didn’t have to do any extensive work to figure out that prescription drugs were being sold on Craigslist,” Brennan said.
She said people should know that police are going to be patrolling Craigslist because it is a new marketplace.