Amber Kay Otero Pleads Guilty to Oxycodone Theft in Carlsbad

Amber Kay Otero, 31, of Carlsbad, N.M., admitted in federal court today to stealing thousands of oxycodone pills from the pharmacy where she worked, capping a three-year theft spree that went undetected until a federal probe cracked the case wide open. Otero pled guilty in Las Cruces, N.M., to a misdemeanor charge of unlawful possession of a controlled substance, admitting she pilfered the drugs for personal use.

The DEA rolled in after Southwest Pharmacy at 2402 West Pierce Street in Carlsbad reported a massive loss of controlled substances. Investigators quickly zeroed in on Otero, a pharmacy technician at the location from May 2012 to April 2015. According to the criminal complaint, she siphoned off approximately 20,344 oxycodone tablets of varying strengths—enough to feed dozens of addictions or flood the underground market for months.

Otero’s confession laid bare a calculated theft: on January 15, 2015, she took oxycodone pills directly from a pharmacy bottle, not for patient care, but for her own consumption. The act wasn’t isolated—it was the exposed tip of a years-long pattern. Her access as a technician gave her the perfect cover, exploiting trust while the opioid crisis tightened its grip on communities like Eddy County.

She now faces up to one year in federal prison when sentenced—no exact date set yet. The case was handled by the DEA’s Tactical Diversion Squad out of El Paso, Texas, and the Pecos Valley Drug Task Force, a multi-jurisdictional unit made up of officers from the Eddy County Sheriff’s Office, Carlsbad Police Department, and Artesia Police Department. The task force operates under the umbrella of the HIDTA Region VI Drug Task Force, a federal initiative targeting high-intensity trafficking zones.

The prosecution falls under the New Mexico Heroin and Opioid Prevention and Education (HOPE) Initiative, launched in 2015 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the UNM Health Sciences Center. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Beck, handling the case from the Las Cruces Branch Office, is part of a broader crackdown on opioid diversion that targets not just street dealers, but insiders with keys to the medicine cabinet.

HOPE’s five-pronged strategy—prevention, treatment, law enforcement, reentry, and strategic planning—aims to dismantle the opioid pipeline from every angle. Otero’s guilty plea marks one small victory in a war that’s cost New Mexico more lives per capita than almost any other state. The initiative continues to push for accountability, one pill, one theft, one conviction at a time. More at HopeInitiativeNM.org.