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South Deerfield, Mass., Man Indicted For Selling Fentanyl Disguised As Oxycodone

A bottle of oxycodone painkillers.
Cindy Shebley

A man from South Deerfield, Massachusetts, has been indicted for selling potentially deadly, counterfeit painkillers in Kansas.

Anthony Stokes, 32, is accused of embossing 114 pills with the letter M and the number 30 so that they appeared to be the painkiller oxycodone, which is made by the company Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals.

But the pills actually contained fentanyl, according to the federal indictment.

Fentanyl is a much stronger painkiller, responsible for thousands of overdose deaths every year. 

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney in Kansas, where Stokes allegedly sold the counterfeit drugs, said the office does not know of anyone dying from them.

Law enforcement agencies from western Massachusetts said they helped execute search warrants in Whately, Deerfield and Greenfield.

Stokes was arrested this week in Massachusetts on 10 criminal counts.

If convicted, he could face decades in prison and millions of dollars in fines.

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Karen Brown is a radio and print journalist who focuses on health care, mental health, children’s issues, and other topics about the human condition. She has been a full-time radio reporter for NEPM since 1998.