‘Pharmacist’-owned pad yields party drugs

A condo unit in Mandaluyong City said to be owned by a pharmacist was found keeping a P1.2-million stash of party drugs during a raid Thursday night.

The unit owner remains at large but two other men, who claimed they were merely its caretakers, were arrested by members of Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) who searched the condo in Barangay Highway Hills.

The PDEA-National Capital Region office on Friday announced the arrest of Ronald Fonda and Gervy Lee in a buy-bust operation that led to the unit owned by the suspects’ “boss,” Carl Agbulos.

Around 840 ecstacy pills, four bottles of empty capsules believed to be used for the so-called “fly high” (a mix of ecstasy and “shabu”), 150 pieces of Valium, 50 milligrams of marijuana, and substances suspected to be cocaine and shabu were found.

PDEA-NCR chief Wilkins Villanueva said Agbulos was in Mindanao at the time. A month-long surveillance work revealed that 20 to 30 persons had been seen going to the unit daily, Villanueva said.

Agbulos’ group would order ecstacy online from a source in the Netherlands using bitcoin as payment, then had the drugs delivered to their clients by parcel service, according to Villanueva.

The PDEA official cited a connection between Agbulos and Emilio Lim, another drug suspect who was arrested on Aug. 13 together with his girlfriend, radio DJ Karen Bordador, in Pasig City. Authorities said they seized marijuana and ecstasy pills from the couple.

“These groups help each other. When one runs out of supply, the other provides,” Villanueva told reporters.

Lee denied being a drug courier for Agbulos, who he said is a pharmacist, and claimed that he just served as his “nurse” in June when Agbulos was ill and needed help.

“He nearly died at the time and I was the only one looking after him. He doesn’t want to be hospitalized because he felt he would only die there. And he can (self-medicate) because he’s a pharmacist,” said Lee, who covered his face with a blanket during a media interview.

He also maintained that no buy-bust operation took place and that the PDEA agents only followed him from the convenience store up to the condo’s seventh floor, where they arrested him.

Villanueva dismissed Lee’s story as an “automatic” denial typically heard of arrested suspects. TVJ