AMERICAN PAIN (34 page)

The third loophole that led to the oxycodone rush was that Florida law allowed doctors to sell narcotics themselves, no pharmacist needed. Pain clinics that charged for appointments
and
drugs could make a lot of money, and the one-stop shopping concept lured drug-seeking patients who didn’t want to pay for prescriptions that might be hard to get filled. Some states allowed this setup; others did not. Some states banned doctors from charging dispensing fees for the drugs. By the height of the state’s pill mill rush, Florida doctors were purchasing nine times more oxycodone than doctors in other states. That’s nine times more than the other forty-nine states
combined
. In one six-month period, according to DEA records, Florida doctors bought 41.2 million doses while every other physician in the country collectively purchased 4.8 million doses.

Ohio was the second-ranked state in this category of physician purchasers. Its doctors bought about a million doses of oxycodone in 2009. The same year, through his doctors, Chris George bought more than twice as much oxy as every single doctor in Ohio. Four of American Pain’s full-time doctors ranked among the top nine physician purchasers of oxycodone in the country.

When Jennifer Turner saw those numbers, she knew she’d found her target.

In the early going, the federal task force had set its sights on ten of the biggest new pain clinics in South Florida. But the DEA numbers made it clear that Florida’s oxycodone racket was dominated by a single entity: American Pain. Other agents agreed with Turner that bringing down the biggest, boldest pill mill of them all would be a statement that might do more than any law to deter shady operators from the pain clinic business.

Which is why the task force wanted to take down the entire operation, including Chris George, his staff, doctors and major sponsors, as well as any affiliated pharmacies and key drug wholesalers. Simply arresting doctors or taking their licenses wouldn’t erase the problem. Chris George had shown that he would just hire more.

But it was hard enough to build cases against doctors. To take the next step and federally prosecute Chris George and his entire organization would require the use of a tool originally devised as a way to bring down Mafia organizations. RICO—the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act—could allow the government to bring Chris George to trial on the grounds that he operated and managed a criminal enterprise. Chris George’s operation had begun with a couple of employees in a single clinic in a shabby bungalow on Oakland Park Boulevard, but it had metastasized to include multiple clinics, pharmacies, dozens of employees, tens of thousands of patients. Throw in his twin brother’s two clinics and other illicit activities and you had a sprawling, potentially criminal, organization. Chris George didn’t write the prescriptions for controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose, but he directed the organization that did.

To make its case, the task force needed evidence that Chris George was running the show, and the best evidence would be recordings of his day-to-day phone calls.

To convince a judge to let them wiretap Chris George’s cell phone, the task force had to gather evidence of criminal activity. But not so much evidence that the judge would deem a wiretap an unwarranted invasion of privacy. Walking this line wasn’t too difficult: 1,891 federal and state wiretap authorizations had been requested in 2008, and 1,891 had been granted. Nevertheless, to avoid having the recordings thrown out in court, the task force had to demonstrate that it had attempted normal investigative techniques, such as surveillance, interrogating participants, and infiltration by undercover agents and informants.

So Turner stationed a surveillance vehicle in the American Pain parking lot. The vehicle contained video cameras, microphones, recording devices, and a Hollywood Police Department detective who knew how to use the equipment. The detective shot video of cars with out-of-state license plates and a trio getting out of one car, one man handing cash to the other two before going inside. The black-tinted windows of the vehicle eventually caught the eye of a security guard, who called Chris George and Derik Nolan to the parking lot to take a look. The detective sat still as George and Nolan tried the doors, speculated about whether it was a news vehicle, and talked about trying to tip it over. Eventually they left.

The task force also began cultivating confidential sources. One early break came when a man was arrested in December 2008 for carrying a concealed weapon. The defendant had a long arrest record and was facing serious time. He told the FBI he could give them information about American Pain. He told them that Chris and Jeff George and Derik Nolan had accused him of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Chris. They’d assaulted and handcuffed him at Jeff’s house, and Jeff had fired a handgun next to his head before they let him go. Later, Chris George had given him $10,000 to keep quiet. The story had little to do with American Pain, but Turner was interested. Kidnapping was a predicate crime in RICO cases.

Another break came when Turner talked to Dr. Eddie Sollie, who’d worked at South Florida Pain for a few months in Fall 2008. Sollie said the clinic was a pill mill, that maybe 80 percent of its patients were addicts. The doctor said two of the physicians saw fifty to sixty patients a day, more than twice as many as he believed a doctor could legitimately treat in that amount of time. The doctors rushed through diagnostic paperwork, and the staff didn’t care if people were faking their urinalysis tests. Sollie said he’d brought up his concerns to Chris George, who’d dismissed them. Sollie had quit, and now he and George were suing each other. The Sollie interview was Turner’s first glimpse inside the operation of American Pain.

Turner wanted more informants. Lucky for her, thousands of American Pain patients were selling pills, and some percentage of them inevitably got busted. Turner’s task force eventually interviewed a number of these offenders about what they’d seen inside the clinic. A Boston drug trafficker was arrested with three thousand oxycodone pills from American Pain hidden in his jockstrap. The man told investigators he’d seen Dr. Beau Boshers, who hadn’t physically examined him but had made him touch his toes. A Kentucky woman facing drug charges agreed to visit American Pain and report back to the DEA. She saw Dr. Michael Aruta, who instructed her to fill her prescription at a Florida pharmacy, not out of state. A Florida man sold 399 oxycodone pills to an undercover deputy sheriff in the parking lot of a Royal Palm Beach shopping center. Later, he told federal agents that Derik Nolan had sold him the pills. If true, this was excellent evidence for an eventual RICO case—outright drug dealing, mixed in with the more ambiguous illegitimate prescribing. Each of these tidbits was added to the growing pile of circumstantial evidence that would go into the wiretap application. Chris George was not a criminal mastermind, Turner decided, but he did seem to be savvy enough to insulate himself from most of the lawbreaking going on around him.

Brick by brick, the task force built the foundation of evidence needed to get a wiretap authorized. Despite the public furor over pill mills, the FBI investigation moved at its usual methodical pace. Unlike local police, who place a priority on making arrests, the bureau wants to build cases that will withstand the rigors of federal court and actually land targets in prison.

If the feds were going to convict the whole group on racketeering, Turner knew they needed to prove that Chris George was the kingpin, that he was in charge and knew what was going on. They needed to make connections between his various operations and actually see him running the day-to-day business. They needed to go inside the clinic.

Detective Sergio Lopez had been doing undercover work for the police department in Hollywood, Florida, for eight years when an FBI agent called in 2009 and asked him to infiltrate a Boca Raton pain clinic. Meaning, go in and ask for a doctor’s appointment. Not your typical street-corner buy-and-bust.

Lopez, a lean, smiley man with merry black eyes and a Hispanic accent, pulled into the crowded American Pain parking lot on a Wednesday in late July. He was wearing audio recording equipment. Inside the clinic, he was amazed to see more than one hundred patients in the waiting room. All the chairs were full, and overflow patients were standing along two walls.

As soon as he walked in, two men approached him. They wore black T-shirts that bore the word S
TAFF.
Lopez said he hadn’t been there before, and they guided him to the new patient window. Lopez waited in line, studying the room. Signs on the walls instructed patients to turn off their cell phones, to pay attention to staff, to not use cameras.

When he got to the receptionist, Lopez handed over an MRI report and his undercover identification card. Both bore the name “Luis Lopez.” The FBI had given Lopez the MRI report; he didn’t know where it had come from, but it indicated that his cervical spine showed “no evidence of fracture or dislocation, no prevertebral soft tissue swelling, no degenerative features.” In other words, nothing was wrong with “Luis’s” spine. Of course, it was intentional. The investigators wanted to see if Lopez could get a prescription with almost no evidence of pain.

The receptionist didn’t take the bait. He said he couldn’t accept the MRI report. He didn’t say why. He didn’t look at the report, just handed it back and told Lopez that he would give him a prescription for an MRI. The MRI prescription itself would cost $50. Lopez handed over the cash, and the receptionist gave him a map to the MRI service and began filling out the prescription.

The receptionist said Lopez should pick either neck or back to be scanned because the MRI company charged separately for each. Lopez picked neck.

He left American Pain, rejoined the federal agents, and they headed for the operation, which was in the trailer behind Goldfingers Gentlemen’s Club. A man was waiting outside with a clipboard, and he took down Lopez’s name and told him to wait in his car to be called. The MRI facility didn’t want a line of pain management patients standing around the strip club parking lot. Twenty other people were already waiting, sitting in their cars.

When Lopez’s name was called, he went inside the trailer, where a woman took his $250 and said that she could “rush” the MRI results for an extra $200. Lopez paid the extra money. However, there were twenty people ahead of him, so it would be several hours before he could get scanned, she said. Lopez made an appointment to return to the trailer at 1:00 a.m.

When he returned for his middle-of-the-night appointment, the woman instructed him to take off his clothes and put them in a locker. He did so. He was reluctant to lie down on the MRI machine, because the pillow bore a head-shaped shadow of grime from all the people who’d lain on it.

He said: Are you going to change the pillowcase?

She said: Don’t worry about it. You’ll be done quickly.

Lopez lay down. The scan took forty-five minutes.

The next day, he went back to American Pain and handed the receptionist a computer disc with his MRI scan. The MRI report was already complete, and it reported a small disc protrusion at C5-C6, a mild bulging of the annulus, and mild scoliosis, all of which was news to Lopez, who had no neck pain. He collected a urine sample in a filthy bathroom with an overflowing toilet, filled out some forms, and was eventually called back to see Dr. Beau Boshers.