A Long Beach attorney sentenced to six months in federal prison for illegally selling more than 1,000 oxycodone pills on Craigslist has been disbarred.
The State Bar of California took the disciplinary action Sept. 30 after Jackie P. Ferrari, 41, failed to respond to a hearing notice stemming from her 2019 conviction in U.S. District Court, where she pleaded guilty to one count of illegally distributing the powerful painkiller.
According to court documents, Ferrari sold a law enforcement informant 50 oxycodone pills for $1,200 in 2019 outside the Beverly Hills law firm where she purportedly worked. She was arrested about a week later after agreeing to sell the informant another 180 pills for $4,100.
Ferrari could not be reached for comment. However, a man who answered a call Tuesday, Oct. 17, placed to her number identified himself as her father and questioned why the disbarment remains newsworthy.
The Drug Enforcement Administration investigation involving Ferrari began after a 22-year-old woman died in August 2018 from an accidental fentanyl overdose.
The DEA initially believed text messages on the woman’s cellphone indicated she may have purchased the narcotics from a drug trafficker associated with Ferrari.
While federal investigators were unable to link Ferrari to the woman’s death, they opened an investigation based on evidence that she was a large-scale trafficker in opiates on Craigslist, along with information from the Costa Mesa and Cypress police departments tying her to illegal drug activities in late 2017.
Ferrari made more than 100 posts on Craigslist advertising a variety of narcotics for sale, including oxycodone, fentanyl, heroin, ecstasy and Adderall, as well as paraphernalia that turns powder cocaine into crack, according to investigators.
Ferrari attempted to disguise the drugs by using code words in the ads, such as “roxy dolls” for Roxicodone, “Chinese White Rice” for powder heroin cut with fentanyl imported from China, and “Black Rice” for black tar heroin.
In her plea agreement, Ferrari admitted to informing first-time customers they would be required to ingest an oxycodone pill in her presence to verify they were not law enforcement officers.
“First time we meet, I will ask you to take one in front of me,” Ferrari wrote in a Craigslist post to potential customers. “Any method is acceptable. If you won’t do this, I cannot (be) selling to you. No exceptions. This allows you to find out that they’re real from pharm and, hopefully, I can feel rest assured that you’re not 5-0. Sound good?”
In 2017, an undercover Cypress Police Department detective responded to a Craigslist ad for the sale of controlled drugs and spoke by phone with a woman who identified herself as Jackie, according to court records. However, the detective did not go forward with the purchase because Ferrari demanded that the investigator take one of the pills in front of her, according to court records.
Investigators also identified Ferrari’s name and phone number through non-drug-related ads on Craigslist, including one advertising a private room for rent at her home in Downey. In the ad, Ferrari described herself as an attorney considering an “alternative career,” according to court records.
An individual arrested by Costa Mesa police in December 2017 for allegedly running a pill counterfeiting scheme named Ferrari as a trafficker, authorities said.
DEA agents and Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators kept Ferrari under surveillance for five months, observing what appeared to be multiple drug transactions outside her home and in the parking lot of a nearby Ralphs grocery store on Lakewood Boulevard. Occasionally, she was spotted allegedly making cash deposits at a Chase Bank in Pico Rivera.
