A 51-year-old Cuban man who left a major clue behind after the massive pharmaceutical heist at the Ely Lilly warehouse and storage facility in Enfield in 2010 has been sentenced to seven years in prison.
Amed Villa, his brother, Amaury Villa, and several others pleaded guilty to a federal charge related to the biggest heist in Connecticut history after $80 million worth of prescription drugs were stolen from the warehouse the night of March 3, 2010.
Authorities said Amed Villa was the one to leave his water bottle behind. That clie helped them unravel a mysterious crime that sounded like something out of Ocean's 11.
The thieves propped a ladder against the warehouse the night of March 3, 2010, climbed onto the roof, cut a hole in it, dropped down into the warehouse and disabled its alarm.
There, prosecutors said, the thieves loaded more than 40 pallets of prescription drugs – including thousands of boxes of Zyprexa, Cymbalta, Prozac, Gemzar and other pills worth tens of millions of dollars – into the back of a tractor-trailer.
The stolen drugs were found in a Florida storage facility more than a year later.
Enfield police chief Carl Sferrazza called the heist "the largest theft we've ever had, not only in Enfield, but probably the largest pharmaceutical theft the country has ever seen."
Local
Another accomplice rented a hotel room in Flushing, New York, where he and Villa bought tools to use in the heist, and he drove Villa from Florida to Connecticut and back, according to prosecutors.
Federal authorities said their investigation revealed that Amed Villa and others also stole more than $13.3 million in pharmaceuticals from the GlaxoSmithKline warehouse in Colonial Heights, Virginia, in August 2009; more than $8 million in cigarettes and a cargo trailer from a warehouse in East Peoria, Illinois, in January 2010; approximately $7.8 million in cellular telephones and multimedia tablets from the Quality One Wireless warehouse in Orlando, Florida, in January 2011, and more than $1.5 million in cigarettes from the Coremark Cigarette Warehouse in Leitchfield, Kentucky, in March 2011.
During each of the thefts, Villa and his co-conspirators got into the warehouse through the roof, disabled the alarm system and loaded the stolen goods into tractor trailers, federal authorities said.
Amed Villa’s DNA was identified on items discarded during the thefts in Connecticut, Illinois, Florida and Virginia.
Amed Villa, who had been living in Miami, has been detained since he was arrested on May 3 and pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit theft and an interstate shipment and five counts of theft from an interstate shipment.
Amaury Villa, Nunez, Marquez and Lopez also pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the Eli Lilly warehouse theft and have been sentenced.
