Investigators charge 13 doctors in pill mill crimes — and one with murder
Aug 24, 2011
The following article was published in the Miami Herald on August 24, 2011:
Investigators charge 13 doctors in pill mill crimes – one with murder
By Audra Burch and Scott Hiaason
After a three-year investigation, federal authorities announced the details of Operation Oxy Alley, a sweeping indictment charging 32 people under racketeering statutes for their involvement in South Florida-based pill mills that doled out 20 million oxycodone pills and profited more than $40 million dollars from illegal sales of controlled substances. In a companion indictment, local authorities charged a doctor with first-degree murder in the death of a West Palm Beach man who died within hours of filling a prescription for a painkiller.
“As a result of today’s takedown, we have dismantled the nation’s largest criminal organization that was illegally distributing pain killers and steroids,’’ said FBI Special Agent in Charge John V. Gillies. “This is the first time doctors, pharmacies, and a pharmaceutical supplier have been indicted for their involvement. Up until now, efforts focused on the demand by targeting individual users. Today, we attacked the source and choked off the supply.’’
Operation Oxy Alley targeted owners, 13 doctors and operators of the nation’s four largest pain clinics — all in Broward and Palm Beach counties — as well as two pharmacies, one pharmaceutical supplier and one internet-based steroid business. The defendants, aged 25 to 76, were charged with crimes including racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute controlled substances. “This is the first time we have used the [racketeering] statutes for a case of this magnitude, going after oxycodone pushers,’’ said Wifredo A. Ferrer U.S. Attorney for the Southern District. “This is used more traditionally against the mafia but we see this as a criminal enterprise.’’
The indictment brought Florida’s prescription medication abuse problem — described by investigators as a homegrown drug epidemic — into sharp focus. Last week, the state’s Medical Examiners Commission released its annual report showing deaths caused by prescription drugs in 2010 were up by about 8 percent. Oxycodone was the cause of death for 2,710 people, about a 28 percent increase since 2009. And about 85 percent of all oxycodone sold comes from Florida.
“Everybody from all parts of the nation, it seems like, comes to South Florida to all get these pain killers,’’ Ferrer said. “Some are addicts who are feeding their habits. Some are just drug traffickers who are buying pills to sell them to make a real good profit.’’
Tuesday’s indictments were the latest in a growing campaign against pain clinics by federal and local authorities that includes a push to hold doctors responsible.
“Today is a game changer. You deal. They die. You’re done,” said Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw.
In February, the DEA led raids on more than a dozen clinics, resulting in 20 arrests — including five doctors — from Miami to West Palm Beach.
The five-count indictment alleges twin brothers Christopher Paul George, and Jeffrey George, both 30 and from Wellington, led a “pill network” of four pain management clinics in West Palm Beach, Lake Worth and Hallandale.
The pain clinics offered patients prescriptions for oxycodone and other narcotics without a medical need, attracting customers from Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Ohio and as far as Mexico and Turkey, authorities said.
Investigators said the doctors employed by the clinics performed cursory exams — if any at all — then gave out prescriptions for cocktails of oxycodone combined with Xanax or Soma. They earned $2,000 to $6,000 a day and up to $1.8 million annually, authorities said. By 2010, the physicians at American Pain in Lake Worth were seeing 500 customers a day. Between July 2008 and March 2010, that clinic alone was responsible for 66,871 prescriptions.
The indictment also alleges that the racketeering defendants violently protected their business against competitors. Among the charges: kidnapping, extortion, assault and assault with a firearm.
So far, the government has seized approximately $4.7 million in cash, most found in the attic of the George brothers’ mother’s Wellington home. The indictment also seeks the forfeiture of about $40 million in cash.
If convicted, the defendants face up to 20 years in prison for each of three counts; 10 years for one count and five years on the last count.
Apart from the federal indictment, Palm Beach County prosecutors also charged a West Palm Beach physician, Dr. Gerald J. Klein, with first-degree murder for the overdose death of a pain-clinic patient named Joseph Bartolucci in 2009.
Klein is accused of prescribing an unnecessary amount of the potent painkiller hydromorphone and anti-anxiety drugs for Bartolucci on Feb. 27, 2009. Bartolucci, 24, was found dead in his home the next day.
Also charged with murder were clinic owner Jeffrey George and Theodore Obermeyer, an office manager at George’s East Coast Pain Clinic in West Palm Beach. According to an arrest report, Obermeyer was instructed by Jeffrey George to make sure the doctors prescribed enough drugs to “keep the patients happy.”
“When a pain clinic operation traffics in prescription drugs and sustains itself based on addicts’ continued dependency on those very drugs, it is entirely predictable — indeed almost certain — that someone will die as a result,” Palm Beach County State Attorney Michael McAuliffe said.
Palm Beach prosecutors also charged Klein, George and Obermeyer with 13 counts of drug trafficking. Prosecutors said Klein dispensed more than 300,000 oxycodone pills from January 2009 to June 2010.
Prosecutors said the arrests were part of a two-year investigation dubbed “Operation Prescription for Death.”
Over the past few years, the George brothers, former homebuilders from western Palm Beach County, emerged as the leading entrepreneurs in South Florida’s booming pain clinic industry. The pair owned a series of clinics stretching from Fort Lauderdale through Palm Beach County up to Georgia and the Jacksonville area.
The twins also became the symbols of the state’s lax regulations of pain clinics: Both were allowed to start up businesses handing out potent narcotics despite past criminal convictions, records show. The Legislature later changed the law to prevent felons from owning clinics.
Last year, a lawyer for the George brothers insisted they have done nothing wrong: “They are running a legitimate business,” attorney James Eisenberg said. “They are following the law.”