Amed Villa Gets 7 Years for $90M Pharma Heist Spree

In a brazen, high-stakes crime that stretched across state lines and netted nearly $90 million in stolen goods, Amed Villa, 51, was sentenced today to 84 months in federal prison for orchestrating the 2010 theft of $60 million in pharmaceuticals from an Eli Lilly warehouse in Enfield, Connecticut. U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton handed down the sentence in New Haven, followed by five years of supervised release, capping a sprawling investigation into a nationwide warehouse burglary ring.

The heist, executed under cover of darkness on March 13, 2010, was a military-style operation. Villa, a citizen of Cuba who last resided in Miami, traveled to Flushing, N.Y., with co-conspirator Rafael Lopez to buy tools used to breach the facility. That night, Villa and his brother Amaury Villa carried a ladder to the back of the building, climbed onto the roof, cut through it, dropped inside, and disabled the alarm system. Alexander Marquez arrived with a tractor trailer, which was backed into the loading dock as more than 40 pallets of drugs were loaded — including massive quantities of Zyprexa, Cymbalta, Prozac, and Gemzar.

After the Connecticut job, the crew split up. Marquez hauled the trailer to Florida, where the stolen pharmaceuticals were transferred to self-storage units in the Miami area. The stash remained hidden until October 14, 2011, when law enforcement raided a Florida storage facility and recovered the evidence. Amed Villa’s DNA was later found on discarded items from the Enfield break-in, as well as from similar thefts in Virginia, Illinois, and Florida.

The investigation peeled back a wider criminal enterprise. Before the Eli Lilly job, Villa and associates stole over $13.3 million in pharmaceuticals from a GlaxoSmithKline warehouse in Colonial Heights, Virginia, in August 2009. In January 2010, they hit a warehouse in East Peoria, Illinois, making off with $8 million in cigarettes and a cargo trailer. Months later, in January 2011, they looted $7.8 million in cell phones and tablets from Quality One Wireless in Orlando, Florida. Then in March 2011, they stole over $1.5 million in cigarettes from Coremark Cigarette Warehouse in Leitchfield, Kentucky.

Each burglary followed the same pattern: rooftop entry, alarm sabotage, and swift loading into tractor trailers. Amed Villa’s fingerprints and DNA tied him to multiple scenes. Federal prosecutors consolidated charges from the Eastern District of Virginia, Central District of Illinois, Middle District of Florida, and Western District of Kentucky into the District of Connecticut for unified prosecution. Villa has been in custody since his arrest on May 3, 2012.

Villa pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit theft from an interstate shipment and five counts of actual theft from an interstate shipment. His co-conspirators — Amaury Villa, Yosmany Nunez, Alexander Marquez, and Rafael Lopez — also pleaded guilty in connection with the Eli Lilly theft and have already been sentenced. With losses attributed to Villa totaling approximately $90 million, the case stands as one of the largest organized warehouse theft rings in recent federal history.

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