victim of identity theft." The wrinkle, he said, "is that the person who stole your identity is an international gunrunner and drug smuggler." The lawyer said he'd reach out to an acquaintance in the FBI, but couldn't promise anything. Even the U.S. government would be unlikely to guarantee McGowan's safety in Africa.

Nestor Del Rosario, Le Roux's Filipino deputy—the man who'd gone to Iran and orchestrated Le Roux's weapons transactions— also made contact with authorities, approaching the Australian Federal Police under the code name Persian Cat, hinting that he was interested in turning on Le Roux. By the time they passed the contact to the Americans, Del Rosario seemed to have lost his nerve and disappeared.

On November 1, 2011, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formally declared a national prescription painkiller epi- demic. "The death toll from overdoses of prescription painkillers has more than tripled in the past decade," the announcement stated. "Overdoses involving prescription painkillers are at epidemic lev- els and now kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine com- bined." To Brill, there was never any question that Le Roux's operation was fueling painkiller addictions and overdoses in the United States. She had sought out buyers from RX Limited web- sites and interviewed them.

Their stories were the ones that would later become familiar as the epidemic mushroomed: A security guard, prescribed Ultram to treat the pain from his shingles, turns to drugsmd.com when his prescription runs out, thinking a doctor is reviewing his order. ("_____ chose Tramadol because he did not want to be on narcot- ics," Brill's report reads.) An unemployed woman lacking health in- surance Googles "tramadol"—the generic name for Ultram—after a bike accident and starts buying from www.tramadolovernight.org. A nurse self-medicates her migraines with pills bought online.

None of RX Limited's biggest three sellers were explicitly in- cluded among the drugs that the federal government cited as part