Across the country, crime labs are seeing a growing number of counterfeit pills.
The Drug Enforcement Administration says some of those counterfeit pills sold on the streets are so convincing that experienced agents sometimes can't tell the difference.
Investigators say drug dealers are producing homemade pills using the deadly synthetic drug fentanyl in their homemade pills, which is cheap and powerful, which means more profit for the dealers.
“These tablets are what's known as M30s, they're 30-milligram OxyContin tablets,” said Jennifer Paris, a forensic analyst for a New Hampshire crime lab.
Pill presses to make the pills are sold on eBay for a few hundred dollars, as well as special tools to score the pills, so they look like pills from legitimate drug manufacturers.
“This is coming and that worries me tremendously. It keeps me up at night,” said Jon DeLena, with the DEA. “There is an entire community of people that aren't willing or ready to put a needle in their arm and use fentanyl. They think they're safe from this fentanyl crisis, but what they are willing to do is buy a pill off the street.”
Dr. Brian O’Connor, who runs a private recovery facility that treats opioid addicts, said many patients buy pills on the streets with no idea it's really fentanyl until they take a urine test.
“I've had many patients who say, ‘You know, the most recent Percocet I bought, it seemed to crush easier, it seemed to give me a different kind of a high," O'Connor said.
On April 24, 24-year-old Justin Wayne Kauffman, 24, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in the death of 23-year-old Alexandria Leigh McNeely.
McNeely was found dead in a car in the parking lot of Brawley Commons Shopping Center last year.
Police said the investigation revealed McNeely died of a drug overdose of counterfeit pills containing fentanyl, which were sold to her by Kauffman.
“This is a threat to our community right now,” DeLena said. “It's something we need to make the public aware that it's out there.”