Status: Under appeal
Case: 1:24-cr-20255
USA v Adam Brosius, Patrick Boyd and Charles Boyd
The owners of Maryland distributor Safe Chain Solutions, Adam Brosius, Patrick Boyd and Charles Boyd, were charged with distributing misbranded and adulterated drugs, trafficking medicine products with false documentation, and wire fraud in 2024.
Bottles of medicine that Safe Chain sold reached pharmacy shelves. Patients received closed containers of vital medicine that looked legitimate, but sometimes the bottles contained the wrong HIV treatment, over-the-counter painkillers, or actual pebbles. In one case, a patient's sealed bottle contained an antipsychotic medicine that rendered them unable to walk or speak.
Brosius pleaded guilty to wire fraud in April 2025 and received an eight-year sentence in October 2025.
The Boyd brothers were convicted by jury of conspiracy to introduce adulterated and misbranded drugs to defraud the United States, conspiracy to traffic in medical products with false documentation, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in October 2025, and were sentenced to decades in prison in March 2026.
This criminal prosecution is one of several that followed a civil suit by Gilead Sciences that accused a complex network of 140 companies and individuals (including Brosius and the Boyds) across 13 states of selling fake and diverted medications to U.S. pharmacies using forged track and trace documents.
On this page:
- PSM coverage
- Trial exhibits, including photos
- Did Safe Chain's owners know they were selling unsafe medicine?
Read key documents from this case in our prosecution document library.
PSM coverage
The larger picture: Fake HIV medication has made its way to U.S. pharmacies—and patients
PSM's article about the use of trademark law to shut down black market HIV medicine trafficking appeared in The Journal of Illicit Trade, Financial Crime, and Compliance in December 2025.
Watch PSM's playlist of videos about the network Safe Chain was working within.
The Evidence
Trial exhibits
Because Charles and Patrick Boyd went to trial we have public access to trial exhibits that prosecutors used to explain their case to the jury. Browse the exhibits below them to get an idea of how Safe Chain operated.
Exhibits 1 - 99
Exhibits 100 - 200
Exhibits 200-299
Exhibits 300-399
Exhibits 400-499
Exhibits 500 - 599
Exhibits 600 - 699
Did Safe Chain's owners know they were selling unsafe medicine?
Conversations in the exhibits make it clear that they knew their suppliers were providing them with suspicious products, and they also knew they were violating the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), which was enacted to prevent counterfeit, stolen, or contaminated drugs from entering the U.S. supply chain.
July 2020: Patrick Boyd complained to Adam Brosius about the condition of HIV shipments, writing, "Spent two hours counting hiv woth the crew. That shits a mess"
August 2020: Charles Boyd advised Boulevard 9229 about the information their pedigree documents (T3s) were required to contain: "The chain of custody should look like this: 1: Manufacturer > 2: Authorized Distributor > 3: Wholesaler > 4: Pharmacy." He asked Boulevard to get a T3 done quickly because a customer wanted it.
September 2020: Pat Boyd wrote Brosius: "We’ve had two bad returns with opened bottles and broken pills last two days and the below sounds pretty bad"
October 2020: After several returns of suspect product from pharmacies, Brosius joked with Charles Boyd about disputed pedigrees from Boulevard: “wtf just fill in whatever info you want LOLOL”
February 2021: Charles Boyd asked legal counsel: "How are we as just a wholesaler able to determine if a product is unfit or could cause harm?"
Safe Chain had been selling suspicious product without consistently providing the T3s he knew were required since mid-2020.
April 2021: Gilead Sciences notified Safe Chain's legal counsel that "none of the Gilead-branded medicines in Safe Chain’s possession are legitimate based on the pedigree documentation Safe Chain provided."
The company filed a Lanham Act suit against Safe Chain and related defendants in July 2021. Johnson & Johnson filed a second suit in April 2022.
Federal criminal charges followed in June 2024.