A Los Angeles-area attorney pleaded guilty Monday to selling opioids on Craigslist, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said.

Jackie Ferrari, a Downey-based lawyer who was admitted to the bar in 2011, faces up to 20 years in federal prison for illegally selling more than 1,000 oxycodone pills through the online classified ads website.

Ferrari's defense lawyer, Tariq Khero of the Law Offices of Tariq A. Khero in Los Angeles, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Authorities said they were alerted to Ferrari's activities after a 22-year-old woman died in August 2018 of a fentanyl overdose. Ferrari was not charged in that death but investigators said text messages on the victim's phone indicated she may have bought the drugs from a trafficker associated with Ferrari.

Law enforcement officers said in court documents that Ferrari posted ads on Craigslist for drugs using coded names such as “foxy roxy dolls,” which referred to Roxicodone, a short-acting version of oxycodone. As part of her plea, Ferrari said she told customers they would have to take a pill in her presence to prove they were not undercover police officers, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Authorities said in court filings that Ferrari sold a law enforcement source 50 oxycodone pills for $1,200 on Jan. 10. Ferrari was arrested eight days later after agreeing to sell the source another 180 pills for $4,100.

Ferrari is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 21 by U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald of the Central District of California.

Ferrari most recently worked at the law office of Cary Goldstein Esq., a palimony and family law firm in Beverly Hills. Cary Goldstein, the firm's founder, told The Recorder in January that he didn't know about the allegations against Ferrari when the company hired her.

“We are shocked and deeply troubled by the allegations leveled against Ms. Ferrari,” Goldstein said in an email. “It is, in my mind, inexplicable as to how an accomplished young lawyer would have engaged in the conduct she is alleged to have partaken.”

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