Testing. Testing. One, two, three.
Sorry. You got the headphones
plugged in?
Yes. This is the doctor.
I am looking for a part time job
- Hi, this is Dianna with...
- It's a little simple...
...medical field.
You guys want to f*ck around?
You're going to f*cking need
pain management. I walked out...
You make a lot more money doing this
than you do doing plastic surgery.
My doctors average
about $1.8 million a year.
Oh, my god. That's great, Chris.
They're in the house.
Baby, you know I love you, right?
What do you want me to do?
Why are you f*cked?
You just need to relax, Chris
and you need to think
of a f*cking plan.
But you need to think of something
and k*lling yourself
is not the answer.
You cannot leave me here
by my f*cking self
to deal with your dirt.
This was the cause
of our epidemic in this country.
Florida was the epicenter,
and the biggest ones in the business
were the George brothers
at American Pain.
The George brothers did not start
the opioid crisis.
But they sure as hell
poured gasoline on the fire.
They became the largest
street level distribution group
operating in the
entire United States.
Nobody put more pills
on the streets than they did.
Nobody.
They created a blueprint
for how this is to be done
and they were operating
in broad daylight.
The scale of this enterprise,
I mean, it was enormous.
You had addicts streaming in
from all over the country
thousands of miles
just to come to Florida to get dr*gs.
When you see what's going on
inside that clinic
your jaw just falls to the floor.
I'd been on the job
as a special agent for over 20 years
and I've seen a lot of crazy.
But this was just batshit crazy.
You couldn't make up the stuff
that happened in this investigation.
Strippers and white supremacists
running medical facilities.
MRIs in the back of a strip club.
Criminal operations
coming in from Appalachia.
Doctors carrying g*ns
under their lab coats.
Only in America.
It was 1980.
She gained a lot of weight.
The doctor said,
"You're getting too big."
They didn't realize that
there were twins.
You know, they showed you
those ultrasounds.
They didn't look like anything to me.
We moved to Wellington.
I had a lot of success
in the building industry.
Wellington is more upscale
than a lot of communities.
It's really known
for horses and polo.
Prince Charles played polo
in Wellington.
I mean, there have been
some famous people.
It was a great place
for them to grow up.
There were lots of kids,
lots of families.
We had four wheelers and go karts
and all those sorts of things.
Their sibling bond was so close.
One would say something
and before he finished,
the other one would laugh.
And I'd say, "Why are you laughing?
He didn't..." Y'know, And he'd say
"Well, I know what he's gonna say."
I had them doing pushups
when they were little.
I mean, we stressed exercise.
They were great tennis players,
tremendous athletes.
And they were on the math team.
They won Palm Beach County
Mathematics Contest.
Along with another kid
that's in prison
with them called Theo.
Chris and Jeff were about
eight or nine years old
when their mother and I got divorced.
I met Chris and Jeff's mother in '89.
And I early on noticed
that they were a little difficult.
They were out in a wooded area
and somehow they started a brushfire
which actually turned into
a small forest fire.
It was sufficient that
the fire department had to be called
and were there for a day or two
putting it out.
Yeah, I wasn't real keen on that
especially because
I was a firefighter.
They ended up getting
community service for it
nothing major.
They couldn't be together more than
five minutes without fighting
and they couldn't be apart
more than five minutes
without wondering
where the other one was.
It was like a love/hate
at the same time.
Although they competed
against each other
you did not want to separate them.
If you picked on one,
you picked on two.
Chris and Jeff played hockey.
Denice said, "I'm not going anymore"
because the parents sitting
in the stands with us
started complaining about the boys.
Stay right there. Drew, come with me.
Get off, you. Goodbye.
Some parents got very mad with them.
Off...
They didn't understand the twin thing
and I had to explain it to them.
With them,
it wasn't always a relaxing time.
For sure.
Their father usually would get
an attorney or whatever for them
who would get them off with sometimes
nothing more than community service.
So they really never had to pay
the price for any of their antics.
Their father told them
the police were stupid
'cause if they were smart,
they'd be making more money
I think they just thought
they were smarter than everybody else
and they could get away
with everything.
I sort of guessed it
when I started seeing them bulk up.
And when I confronted them,
I was like
"Don't you know
how bad this stuff is for you?"
And they were just,
"Oh, no, no, we get the good stuff."
On some discussion board
on the internet
I found somebody in Yugoslavia
that I could Western Union money to.
They'd put the steroids
in, like, VCR tapes.
I would use some of them,
me and my brother
and then sell some of them
to my friends.
The names they were shipped to
were always fake names.
I had them shipped to a
local business in West Palm Beach
but this time, I went and picked up
the package and I was walking out.
All the agents, you know,
came and arrested me.
It was his first felony offense.
Chris got the jail that let you out
to go to work and then come back.
And he would come
to work for me at Majestic.
We were building 100 homes at a time,
a $40 million business.
We put a lot of pride
into the business
and Chris carried
that pride with him.
I took a job working for Chris
and Jeff's father.
Me and him
became pretty good buddies.
We were both into
the same type of things.
Mosh pits
just banging and elbowing
and kneeing and...
having fun redneck style, I guess.
Emerald City is just, you know,
your standard strip club.
Chris would show up
with his $500 in singles
pretty much every night to see her.
I came to Florida
when I was about 19.
New Hampshire was no good for me.
Everyone's hooked on something there.
That's why I ran away.
He was big, he was handsome,
had an expensive car
and sounds like he's fun.
We spent the night, and it was,
you know, ever since then.
From that moment on,
they were never apart.
Here comes my posse right now!
So, our contractor this week
is John George.
We did a TV show,
Extreme Home Makeover.
Chris and Jeff both worked
on that house.
That was the height
of Majestic Homes.
The market was red hot.
And then, of course,
you had 2007 to 2008
a catastrophe.
To see it collapse was sad.
I had no idea he was even a twin
till I saw his brother.
Like, how do you leave that out?
Isn't that weird?
- This call is from...
- Jeff.
An inmate at a federal prison.
South Beach Rejuvenation
was a basically
a front for illegal steroid clinic.
It's telemedicine for steroids.
I was a patient.
You would get blood test done
and you were automatically approved.
I don't even think
the doctor looked at it.
You would get a list of pretty much
any anabolic steroid under the sun.
And two days later,
you got a box of rigs
and all the steroids you wanted
just came right to your house.
I was looking to buy competitors
to expand South Beach Rejuvenation.
And Dr. Overstreet
had a good little setup in Miami.
Dr. Overstreet, he's the one
who brought the pain clinics
to Chris and Jeff's attention.
He told Jeff the big money
was at the pain clinics.
Anything to do with money
perks Chris and Jeff's interest.
For a doctor,
he was young, at 38 years old.
He was like a bohemian type guy.
Dr. Overstreet absolutely just wanted
to make a quick buck.
He wasn't trying to cure cancer.
He was pretty much just content
doing what he did
come in and work in his flip flops
and Bahama shirt
with a medical coat over top.
We decided to become 50/50 partners
with Dr. Overstreet.
My brother and I were equal partners
and we each had a responsibility
to head up one office at first.
We walked down
to the tax collector's office
gave him $36 a name
basically gave us
a license to deal dr*gs.
No questions asked.
I had no idea.
I thought it was going to be like,
a regular doctor's office.
Elevator music playing
and a couple people sitting out there
not a line all the way
down the street.
The very first day, I was like,
"g*dd*mn, man
we're not even open yet
and there's people waiting."
They're scratching their neck,
drinking Mountain Dews
and smoking cigarettes.
It kind of reminded me
a bit of a trap house, you know?
I was 23 at the time.
I owned half of a grow house.
I was selling kilos of cocaine.
I was doing all kinds
of crazy dumb sh*t.
My buddy that was living
at the grow house
started getting strung out.
I said, "What the hell
are you doing, man?"
He goes, "These."
He said, "They're Roxies."
Oxycodone pills.
The M boxes,
what everyone called them.
He goes, "Man, they'll f*ck you up."
He lost a crop of pot
because he was just so messed up.
He couldn't... couldn't maintain it.
So, his way to try to,
like, pay me back
was to introduce me to this doctor.
When I went in there, told me,
"Try to touch your toes."
"Oh, I can't."
"Oh, yeah. You're messed up, man."
They gave me 180 oxycodone tablets
the first visit
and the second visit,
he upped me to 240.
I mean, it was just so simple.
I had never sold pills
and they were gone
within a matter of a day or two.
I was like, "Holy sh*t, I just made
$3,000 doing nothing."
In most states,
there's a central database.
If you went to a doctor
and try to go to another doctor
and get a schedule II narcotic filled
it's gonna alert them.
It's gonna alert the authorities.
It's gonna alert the doctors
not to see you.
It's gonna alert the pharmacies
not to fill it.
Everyone knew that Florida
didn't have a database at the time.
You could go to as many doctors
as you wanted to.
I was working at the barbershop
so cash in my pocket every day,
you know.
With a barbershop,
it slows down, speeds up.
And then weed,
we buy a pound, break it down.
Cocaine, you buy a sack,
cut it up, so...
- Wait, can I say that?
- Yeah.
Yep.
A buddy of mine said,
"Hey, come to this pain clinic.
Fill the script,
I'll buy it back from you."
These guys are literally
just writing scripts.
They weren't checking your bag,
you didn't have to cough twice.
He wrote me a prescription
for 180 blues
60 Percosets, and 30 Xanax.
I called all the guys.
"I'll pay you 500 bucks.
They give you a prescription,
we go fill it."
And I was doing that
times 10 or 15 people a day
120 times a month.
And they did used to laugh at me
that I was the most
organized drug dealer ever.
'Cause I had a laptop
I had all of my patients
on a calendar.
A laptop. Where you open up...
cr*ck open the laptop on the counter.
So I was going from hustling,
bullshitting, barbershop
to $5,000, $6,000 a day cash.
And, by the end of the week
I would have a jar, mason jar,
this full with Xanax.
Another jar this full,
maybe two jars, of Percosets.
So that was my byproduct.
Still got a great value
on the street.
People are still addicted to that.
And then Xanax is a classic.
I mean, everything was little,
small, sh*thole storefronts.
One doctor in each one
until the George brothers came out
with their first,
you know, big clinic.
It just exploded after that.
Well, they had a license
from the state of Florida.
So, you thought they were
a legit pain clinic
and you didn't think twice about it.
And then when they opened,
it was a rush of people.
The lines were wrapped
around the building every morning.
They're fighting, and there's needles
all over the place.
And at that time,
nobody knew what was goin' on.
It wasn't on the news.
The first tip that got us over there
was some crazy behavior
that was going on at a McDonald's.
There seemed to be traffic going
from one side of the street
to the other.
And there was a sign
that said "Pain Clinic".
Anthony and I parked
across the street
and watched for a while.
It was shady times a million.
It was bizzaro world.
Anthony said, "I'm gonna go
find out what's going on."
I had brought
a couple packs of cigarettes.
Because everybody
wants to bum a cigarette
and then they wanna talk.
He came back to the van and said,
"They're all gettin' dr*gs."
We saw it as soon as they hooked up
with these pain pills
they would go to their cars and use.
They were snorting it
and sh**ting up. Right in daylight.
It was, like,
everywhere you started to look
now that you saw it once
you're like,
there's another car, they're doing.
There's another car, they're using.
None of it was normal.
I've never seen the likes
of this doctor's office before.
You know, I'm a construction guy,
I swing a hammer.
I don't think there was anybody
with any medical office experience
let alone any medical training.
As we expanded,
we needed a lot more people.
The hiring process
was completely different
for male and female employees.
Male employees were usually friends.
The female employees, we would start
by placing an ad on Craigslist.
We liked to joke around and say
that they only really hired
attractive women, and...
But, I... I didn't really...
I didn't know that at the time.
I was initially the only person
in the pharmacy department.
I would take the prescriptions
that the doctor wrote
and I would fill the medication.
I didn't know what Roxicodone was
I didn't even know
it was, like, this big thing.
I enjoyed going to work every day.
We were all young,
we were all immature.
It was like a frat house.
There were remote control cars
and helicopters
and they'd fly around
the office and...
sh**t each other
with slingshots and tasers.
Throwing knives,
Chinese stars stuck in the ceiling.
Swords and shields
for the occasional swordfight.
Refrigerator full of beer,
sh*ts of Patrn.
Just anything that
you ever wished you could do
when you were a teenager
we did it when we were
supposed to be adults.
- In a doctor's office.
- In a doctor's office.
We realized that we needed
to put more standards in place.
So, we hired a consultant.
I had a very interesting career,
I think.
I was the senior investigator
in the Miami office.
A group supervisor
and a program manager.
I retired, and my wife decided
she wanted a divorce.
She got half my pension, so I had
to pick up some money somehow.
And that's how I got involved
with the pain clinics.
I met one of them
one of the George brothers.
Now I don't remember
which one it was.
- What was your impression of him?
- A businessman.
He knew nothing about the dr*gs,
but he had doctors for that purpose
and he hired me to keep him straight.
So it became
a little business for me.
I would do a...
like a mock DEA-type inspection.
I had a checklist.
They have to have signs posted.
They had to follow
all the rules of pharmacy.
Labels on the vials. Record keeping.
Inventories.
Physicians can justify writing
for any drug they want
as long as they have standards
for proper documentation.
We kind of looked to the doctors
to see how far we could push it.
The doctors didn't say anything
or raise a red flag
or even an eyebrow.
Neither did the distributors
or the drug wholesalers.
The pills would be mailed
through UPS or FedEx.
They would arrive in brown boxes
just like any shipment.
The patients had no idea.
I imagine if they know
the delivery guy would never make it
to the front door.
Just one delivery
could be worth over a million dollars
on the street to a drug dealer.
We bought medication
from over ten wholesalers
and everyone had their own process.
Some were very simple, where all
I had to do was fax them or email.
And they would send him.
If the wholesaler wanted me
to check on a clinic
I would do it.
They would pay me
a couple hundred dollars
for each stop I made.
I told them, "Don't sell it,
it said it on the report I gave 'em."
If they choose
to sell it to 'em, I did my job.
That's true,
because if they were ordering
and I said they're keeping
good records
they can... they can justify
in their documentation
of what the dr*gs are being used for,
and that's why they're buying more.
But wouldn't it be suspicious?
You know, suspicious
is not really defined in the law.
It's a judgement call.
Every week
our patient numbers went up.
And I never want to lose
any business.
So I tried to make our office
as much of an assembly line
as it possibly could be.
I always wanted to work undercover.
I thought if you're gonna be a cop,
you should probably do the...
the really cool stuff.
Going into a house
buying a kilo of cocaine.
Doing a weapons deal
or something like that.
Okay, westbound now,
westbound through the light.
Soon, all those deals
became 50-pill, 100-pill
500-pill, 1,000-pill deals.
That's gonna be 13 pills for $160.
Counting out the money
to the guy now.
We have the signal.
- All right.
- Hey, hey!
Let me see your hands,
don't move, don't move.
Cars were being stopped
left and right.
- What did I do?
- Put the cigarette down.
- What did I do?
- Put the purse down.
Prescription after prescriptions.
We got the Roxies. We got the Xanax.
The expl*si*n was almost instant.
You could throw a rock
and hit somebody
with a hundred blues.
- Four to 14 grams.
- Alprazolam, right?
If the main ingredient
in each pill is Oxycodone
then you can weigh them
all together, because...
At that time, we're still
a local police department.
We really didn't have
the capabilities
to really understand
what was goin' on.
All right,
well, I didn't know that the...
the Percosets went with the Oxys.
If you look at the ingredients
in a Percoset...
I'm gonna start feelin' sick soon
if I don't have my medication.
What do you think?
Yeah, something's brewin'.
The sun is so different down there.
First time I went, we were so burnt
we could barely walk
into the doctor's office.
Florida was the never-ending
pill bottle.
It was wide open.
In the western part of Kentucky,
we were the biggest ring
trafficking narcotics from Florida.
I used to do, like,
what you might call muscle work.
I mean, some of the stuff's
pretty horrible, for real.
Prison school.
It's where all the hookups are.
Whitney's father, Glenn, my uncle,
he was in prison with this guy
who had this hookup in Florida.
Dad and my cousin Red
started going to Florida
gettin' Roxies and bringin' 'em back.
And I started sellin' 'em for 'em.
Roxies, back then,
wasn't really heard of in Kentucky.
We had to give 'em away, pretty much,
just to get 'em hooked on it.
Prescription dr*gs, they sell good.
Yeah.
I started goin' to the doctor
gettin' Plegines
when I was 12 years old.
They're a speed.
In the '90s, I was selling Dilaudid.
It was a big one then.
My brother Glenn come by and he said
"Do you want to make some money,
some real money?
Just ride up there with me
to Florida."
South Florida Pain
was the original pain clinic.
The word on the street was they wrote
the most pills, and they were crooked
and they were felons
that owned the clinic.
So you wanted to go there.
We were buyin' 'em for
$3 a pill, basically
from the George brothers' clinics.
And we would bring 'em back
to Kentucky
and we'd sell 'em for $20 a pill.
We would sponsor people
goin' down there
like, we would pay for their
doctors' visits and their expenses.
And in return,
we would get their prescription
and I would sell the hell out of 'em.
You're makin' 18... $19,000
off just one person.
I would take van loads
of people down there.
I mean, we rocked it
while it was there.
I told somebody,
and they told somebody else, and...
I mean there was hundreds,
maybe thousands of people.
Those drug dealers in Kentucky
were renting buses.
"Tree of Life Baptist Church"
the bus said on it.
And that's... that's how
they started coming down.
They were all wearin'
matchin' shirts.
If you get pulled over,
no one suspects a thing.
I had just transferred
to the South Florida
high intensity drug trafficking area.
We were part
of the OCDETF task force.
It was us, and the FBI,
along with the DEA, other agencies...
Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office,
Broward County Sheriff's Departments
and local police departments
teamed up.
I was literally in the break room
at the water cooler one day
meeting some of our
local law enforcement partners
and I told them that
I had worked healthcare fraud
for a number of years.
And one of the police officers said,
"Healthcare fraud?
Maybe you guys would be interested
in looking at these clinics."
Typically, we would be looking
at cocaine, marijuana...
Pills were never on our radar.
Why are so many people traveling
from outside the state to come here?
This isn't like we had
the Mayo Clinic set up here
where it's the finest facility
in the entire country.
You're talking about street corner,
popped up overnight pain clinics.
We decided to focus
on the most prolific group.
That would be the George brothers.
On its surface,
everything looked legitimate.
These are real doctors,
they have real licenses
they have real DEA control numbers,
and what looked to be a real clinic
so the question was,
where was the crime?
Where was the crime?
Which opened up a whole new realm
of the MRI companies.
Within weeks, Pete Tyndale
he showed up wanting
to do our MRI business.
He's always working,
hustler kind of guy.
Premium tobacco, $4.
Pete was involved in all kinds
of different businesses
I mean, the guy was an entrepreneur.
Girl, just relax your mind
He started a company
called Faye Imaging.
It was a mobile MRI unit.
Everyone knew that Faye Imaging
was the place to go.
- First thing, you'd go meet Pete.
- Parking Lot Pete.
It's in the back of a strip club
off 45th Street in Palm Beach.
While you're waiting to get your MRI
you go in there
and get a few lap dances
and when they're ready,
they'd come in there and get you.
I never went in to the strip club,
I wasn't old enough.
I couldn't get in.
I just got in the tube
he gave me the CD
right afterwards with the image
and then the doctor's report
24 hours later.
Everyone that went in there
had a herniation, a bulging disc
something was wrong with 'em.
And I said, "Pete, how does everybody
have something wrong with 'em?"
He said, "Let's just say
my doctors look closer
than other doctors."
Everyone told the doctors,
on a one to ten, they're a ten.
And there's no way
that someone could read your mind
and know if you are or you aren't.
They wanted to have
medical documentation for things
all right? To cover their self.
It was a facade.
Every time that I went down there
and I spoke with a doctor
he played along with it, like
he'd look at the MRI
and he'd say, you know
"You're in extreme pain."
Like, "Boy, you need
this much medicine."
I mean, it just seemed
too good to be true, to me.
- Five seconds.
- We started to work with informants.
Some of the patients.
They told us about what's going on
inside the clinic.
I used to work fraud cases.
Committing fraud is just a matter
of understanding the system
and taking advantage of its weakness
to commit a crime.
And that's exactly
what these guys did.
We had to prove that the MRI,
the patient files, and examinations
were window dressing that
allowed them to deal dr*gs legally.
Here's one there, South Florida Pain.
Roxicodone. Xanax.
When I first seen the first doctor,
I was 17.
We would just go see the doctor
and come back.
Just like going to the mall.
Yeah, a 40-hour trip to the mall.
I was going in three
or four times a week.
Come home, kiss my husband,
get back in the truck.
The route I took to Florida
was I65 to I24
to 75 to 95 all the way to Florida.
I could probably make that trip
right now with my eyes closed.
A lot of people would go the I95,
I'd always go south Florida parkway.
- Why'd you go that way?
- That's just the way I like going.
Through Kentucky, 2 1/2 hours,
Tennessee, 2 1/2 hours
Georgia, 8 hours,
and then Florida, 6 hours.
On the way down there,
it was always a time crunch
like, we stopped bare minimum.
Well, stop for gas and stuff,
but that's it.
We stopped to see an alligator
one day.
It was coming up on there.
We were looking through data
from the DEA.
The George brothers
and people like them
got almost 90% of all the oxycodone
manufactured in the entire country.
Of the 20 highest
prescribing physicians
in the entire country
five of them worked
at just one of Chris' facilities.
Just in 2009 alone, they ordered
just shy of three million pills.
Those numbers were through the roof
compared to their competitors.
These are what they call red flags
in the investigative business.
I believe that the individuals
who manufactured
distributed, supplied
these medications
had to have known exactly
what was going on in south Florida.
They're following
the life cycle of this pill
from the day its manufactured
to the end user.
They were having to continuously
up the supply to meet the demand.
And the demand, it was very clear
as to where it was coming from.
When we would come back from Florida,
it would be like Christmas.
I had a duffle bag filled up.
I rattled.
Everywhere, always.
When everyone's got money,
everyone likes each other
you know what I mean?
We're having parties, we're family.
We was all close again.
Easter in 2009, my aunt had
the adult Easter egg hunt.
You know the little plastic eggs?
I was like, okay, well, look,
we can't hide dr*gs in the eggs.
So, if they found a penny,
it's gonna be a Roxy 15.
If they found a nickel,
it's a Roxy 30.
If they found a dime, it's weed.
I had a big old yard.
We hid probably 200 eggs.
And then when she said "go,"
the stampede of us running out.
Charging like bulls out there
to find it.
I mean, they was all over the yard
like little maggots
trying to find them.
My cousin Red,
he was bulldozin' over people
grabbing these Easter eggs.
It was hilarious.
And then we were racing to see
who could snort the most.
Hello?
Chris would stay
in his office all day
doing whatever he did in there.
Hello?
You know, I would be out
dealing with all the zombies
and I would snap at them,
smack them around as need be.
Couple hours into the day, I was not
as nice as I probably seem right now,
you know?
When he did come out
and he would see me mistreating
or being rude to a patient
or something like that
he would jump on their side
and you know, because
you know, they're just dollar signs.
I'm trying to make it look
as legitimate as possible
and I got these frickin' morons
in a parking lot
acting like they're at Mardi Gras.
It's a whole scene.
The entire adult population
of certain towns in Kentucky
or West Virginia or whatever
would come down.
People brought Winnebagos
and pulled out their lawn chairs
and everybody hanging out
at their cars smoking, drinking.
When you pulled into the parking lot,
it was a family reunion sometimes.
There'd be maybe six or eight people
in my family sittin' there.
"Oh, what are y'all doing down here?
I didn't know it was y'all time
to come down here. Who you bringin'?"
I believe we've created,
like, a new form of tourism.
We were basically like
the Disneyland of pain clinics.
It's not a good look.
I was just waiting for somebody
to come in and shut us down
and throw handcuffs on us, you know?
Just never happened.
It was unbelievable to me.
And at the same time, the juice
is kind of worth the squeeze
you know what I mean?
At the end of the week, I had MRI
companies coming handing me
$3,000, $4,000 in cash for all
the people I sent in their direction.
The sponsor would be like,
"I brought ten people.
How much is it gonna cost
to get them to cut the line?"
I'd be like, "Give me two grand."
The people that work the counters,
every single person that came through
gave them $50 to move them up.
The patients would say,
"I'll pay you extra
if you fill my prescription first."
And you know what
the cashiers would do.
That's theirs.
So I would start taxing them.
Every employee, $200 a day.
At the end of every day,
I'd have another stack.
$2,000, $3,000 sitting on my desk.
I was probably making $20,000 a week.
They didn't have time
to use a cash register.
They literally had garbage bins where
when they would take your money
they would drop it in there.
These guys are all taking
these bags like Santa Claus.
Dollar bills
flying around everywhere.
They didn't give a sh*t about that.
Literally, sack of money each.
There wasn't a f*cking CPA on staff,
and of course...
Derik.
He was enjoying those cash plays.
It's f*cking free money, dude.
Once word got out that
there was money to be made
and big money,
they popped up everywhere.
Like weeds.
Starting my own clinic, it was easy.
I mean, it was...
it was actually too easy.
It wasn't till I met Vinny
when I realized how easy it was.
I went into
Vincent Colangelo's clinic.
I was doctor shopping.
I'm just sitting there
filling out patient forms.
He grabs my form and he just starts
checking ten on the pain level.
"This hurts, this hurts, this hurts.
You gotta tell him this."
I was like,
"Who the hell is this guy?"
Everyone's like,
"Oh, that's the owner, that's Vinny."
Pill Mill Vinny.
We hit it off. The next day
we went and met for lunch.
He goes, "You want to be
a business partner?"
At that time, I drove
a big jacked up truck. Yellow F150.
And he said, "I want your truck.
That's part of the deal."
I said, "I don't have nothin'
to drive."
"That's fine.
I'll give you this Mercedes."
So, he had an addiction to cars.
He'd be online buying cars.
Every other day,
there'd be a semi showing up.
They'd open up the door...
"Oh, that's that 1967 Camaro.
I forgot about that."
He ended up having
to go get a warehouse
to house all these things.
Vinny has always been a crackhead.
He's always smoked cr*ck.
And he went to prison for heroin.
Came out of prison
and was on probation.
I think, whenever
he started the pain clinics.
His clinics were the most unorthodox,
for sure, I mean.
The one that we opened up
had two pool tables in it
he said, "We gotta have
the pool tables."
I said, "For f*cking what?
It's a doctor's office."
This guy was just over the top
with everything he did, man.
Over the top.
- How's it going?
- First of all, turn that off, man.
I'm whoever I want to be. Okay?
...answer questions.
In a minute, I'm gonna snatch
this camera from this dude.
You don't even know, man.
I realized, "Holy sh*t.
If this guy... this guy can do it,
I got this sh*t."
It seemed like every week we'd hear
about a couple others opening up.
- Hello?
- Hey, that pain clinic opened.
How do you know?
Because there's a Mexican standing
in the middle of the street
with a sign that says
"pain clinic" and an arrow.
Drive by sh**ting, f*ckin' free sh*t.
There was a clinic
called Palm Beach Pain
that put an office
a few blocks down from ours.
So, they were the ones
trying to steal my patients the most.
He will get rid of the competition.
He is so competitive.
It's, like, stupid.
Soon as somebody he felt
was trying to take something
that he considered his,
man, he was all on it.
One night, we gathered up
the ball bearings and slingshots
and sat in the parking lot
of Palm Beach Pain
sh*t all the windows
and computers out of the office.
Are you certified in pain management?
Why do you think so many people
are coming from out of state
to see you here?
'Cause they're from
a Bible Belt state
and they can't get pain medication.
The man who answered
would not give us his name.
We spent months working on the story
because we knew something significant
was going on.
Are there doctors in Kentucky?
I don't know. I don't think
somebody would help up there.
I was told by one of my sources
that the guy that was running it
was some guy named Chris George.
We waited and waited
until we saw him and we went for it.
Morning, Mr. George?
We have pictures of people snorting,
sh**ting up in this parking lot
after coming out of your clinic.
I mean, what do you have to say
about what's going on here?
I don't believe you're right.
That's all you have to say?
After our story, then they moved.
We followed them every place
that they had, we found them.
You can run, but you can't hide.
- Hey, are you... here for..
- You're on camera.
- You're being recorded.
- I see that. Why?
Because we're here.
And it's meant... who are you?
I took pride in the fact
that they were worried about us.
Ma'am, we just want to know
why all of these people
have to drive thousands of miles
to see your doctors.
The wholesalers called.
They were like, "Man
you guys look like drug dealers.
We can't sell to you guys anymore.
But listen, change the name.
Change the address."
Wink, wink, nod, nod.
And we're back in business.
At that point,
we were probably buying
a couple hundred thousand pills,
maybe a million pills a month.
That's a gravy train right there.
We were in Fort Lauderdale.
I saw a car pull over really quick,
and they rolled a kid out of the car.
And he was...
he just looked like he was dead.
And he was kind of blue
and I was kind of getting ready
to CPR him, you know?
And I did maybe
one or two compressions
and he just woke up like a zombie.
He just... he just nodded out
on that... that opiate aspect
of these dr*gs.
And... and his friends panicked
and threw him out of the car.
I was working
at a children's hospital
on a neonatal unit
in Broward County, Florida.
All of a sudden, we had
all of these babies on our unit
that were addicted to dr*gs,
going through withdrawals
and they were all testing positive
to oxycodone.
My hospital didn't want it known
that we had drug addicted babies
on our unit.
And I was like, "Are you kidding me?"
Every hospital in Broward County
has drug addicted babies on it."
At that moment
there was 150 pill mills
just in Broward County.
People were dying because of them.
Families being destroyed.
They come to Florida and gets dr*gs.
Die on the way home.
Or die at home.
It was really bad.
I couldn't walk away
from the drug addicted babies
and just ignore it.
We all showed up with our signs,
up and down we went.
With Florida regulations so laxed
that convicted felons are allowed
to own and operate pill mills
South Florida is ground zero.
I was amazed at just the volume
of weeks and months...
and months of doing these stories.
You would see
what we've shown 'em on TV
and you would say to yourself
who's not watching this?
You know, what does it take
to wake people up?
I saw some of the articles.
My concern was them
getting in trouble with the law.
We would talk about that.
And they convinced me
"Nope, no problem here.
We have doctors,
we can't tell them what to do."
They had the doctors sign forms
at the end of every day.
You didn't over prescribe
and they did all this
to protect themselves.
Chris had asked me,
"Is there some place
like, offshore I could put money?"
He says, "I was thinking Belize."
And I said,
"Well, if you want to take the risk
like they did in Panama
in '80 something."
Plus, I didn't think he had
any real reason to, you know
'cause I didn't think they
were doing anything that illegal.
So, there were four safes
in the attic, full of money.
Jeff?
Jeff wasn't a very good
business partner.
My office was the biggest
pain clinic in the country.
His was an average size seeing
around 30 to 50 patients a day.
And that was because he didn't put in
the time and effort like I was doing.
I used to describe Jeff
as the Paris Hilton
of West Palm Beach.
Always in the news
doing something stupid.
We've discovered one of
the major players in South Florida
is this man, 29-year-old Jeff George.
And you're telling me you're...
you're connected
with this clinic too?
Can't comment
but we'll talk later on.
Jeff's more out there and flamboyant.
He tried to start too many businesses
at one time.
Shutter King.
Makes me shutter
thinking about it now.
He did hurricane shutters.
None of the shutters ever worked.
When hurricane Frances hit the area,
he got sued.
And that business shut down.
Jeff wanted to get
into treasure hunting
so I bought him a treasure boat.
Finding treasure in the ocean
is difficult.
Jeff loses interest in it
within four or five days.
And then, I can't remember
what Jeff got into next.
I think it was time shares.
He would tell me
to come pull up to his clinic
at nine o'clock at night.
And he'd throw
couple hundred thousand Roxy 30mgs
in the trunk of my car.
And I would then drive it to a place.
A week later, manila envelopes
full of cash would show up
so Jeff could buy
his strip clubs and whatnot.
He got a little greedy.
People are saying
money changes people
and that sometimes I think it does.
You know,
when you're making money like that
it tends to distract you.
Our relationship was very rocky.
I guess he had
a couple of assistants.
And, I think, you know,
worked under his desk.
You know what I mean,
if you understand what I'm saying.
So Dianna... Pretty sure
she didn't like that very much.
Chris didn't want her
at the office anymore
so he could try to bang
the other chicks in the office.
So Chris opens up a pain clinic
and basically gives it to her.
And I think that's where Executive
came from.
He needed somebody
that he could trust
to operate the business.
So I did. I'm gonna be good at it.
And I was.
Executive Pain. It was a busy clinic.
Probably the second biggest clinic
in the country.
Seeing about 200 patients a day.
When I had to kick somebody
out of American Pain
I would just send them
to Executive Pain.
Give them a fresh start
so all my paperwork looked good
you know what I mean?
Oh, the guy came in with track marks
I kicked him out,
I don't know what happened there.
Chris also convinced Denise,
his mother, to go to work for him.
Denise was in the office,
I mean, she saw what was going on.
They want to know what's the
percentage of out of state patients.
Denise was the assistant manager,
kind of.
She oversaw everything
when I wasn't there.
Anything I needed,
she would help me out with it.
She was the one that was meeting
with the wholesalers
and getting
the doctors to sign all their stuff.
Was she ever suspicious
of the operation?
She never anything to me.
You start building your link chart
right off the bat.
Chris's pain clinics
were Much more prolific
than Jeff George's pain clinics were
so Chris was definitely
at the top of the chart.
You would love to get an undercover
working in the clinic
but we couldn't do that in this case
because if you didn't know
Chris or Jeff
you did not get hired.
We started figuring out,
well, what can we do
to get an undercover in there?
I was sitting at my desk
and I was wearing
an Affliction shirt.
Affliction was like
the big thing back then.
And I heard, "Who are you?"
And I said, "Well, I'm the new guy."
And she goes, I need an undercover.
The second you meet Jen,
you know she means business.
She told me, what was going on
and then, it's like
you just want me to go basically
to a doctor's appointment?
And she said, "It was not like
any other doctor's office
you've ever seen before."
It was not very clean.
Chairs like bus terminals,
like, very close together.
When you see the video,
it doesn't look anything like
any medical facility
I've ever been in to.
It looks like a DMV.
And Derrick Nolan is shouting,
shouting at the top of his voice
at the patients, threatening them.
People drooling and slumped over
part of you wants to,
you know, go over there
and say, "Hey, man, are you okay?"
you know
but you don't want to
draw attention to yourself
'cause you have to have an idea
that Derrick is looking
for undercovers.
I knew when something was off,
I was always watching.
I would grab you up, pat you down.
Ask you some questions,
make sure your story makes sense.
I can't tell you how many people
the police sent in there.
I sniffed them out.
Walked to the front desk.
Paid my initial fee.
The name I was using Tyler Beckett.
Don't ask where it came from.
I think Josh Beckett was a pitcher
for the Marlins at the time.
Give 'em my MRI report.
So he looked at it and he said,
"No, this MRI report says
there's nothing wrong with you."
So I said, "Can I get a new MRI?"
And he said, "Sure, give me $50.
I'll write you a prescription."
So I'd give him another $50.
Wrote me a prescription. For the MRI.
Now we're still talking about the guy
that's still answering phones.
Pulled a piece of paper out
had directions on it to Faye imaging.
I get back, I brief everybody
and they're like
"Okay go to Faye Imaging."
So we follow the address
and we pull into the parking lot.
Immediately, you think
the guy's messing with you.
It's a strip club.
You pull around back and sure enough
there's a trailer there.
Someone coming in.
They're checking people in.
And he said, "Oh, it'll be awhile."
I said I'll give you
an extra 200 bucks.
And she said, "Okay. You're next."
And they walked me
to the MRI machine.
They said it would be faxed
within an hour.
We go back to American Pain
and had to do my urine test.
And then I got to go in
to see the doctor.
It was Dr. Boshers.
He looked worn down.
We found out later, Dr. Boshers,
he would use a lot of pills himself.
And he would carry
a g*n to the clinic.
We asked him,
"Why do you carry a g*n?"
He goes, "That place is dangerous."
He took my blood pressure.
A quick history.
He'd asked me
if I'd ever taken Roxicodone before.
You're basically already
prescribing me a drug.
And then I knew
everybody knows what's going on.
I got a little more comfortable
because he knows what I'm there for.
Here I am thinking,
"Well, I just left the waiting room
with 35 to 40 people slumped over,
head nodding...
I need to blend in."
So now I felt this whole thing
spiraling out of control.
This very easy task went to failure.
I'm trying to think
how I'm gonna explain this to Jen.
I just screwed up, you know.
I'm the only undercover
that can go into a pain clinic
and not get pain pills.
And I look up...
And there's Chris George
standing in front of me.
Wearing an Affliction T-shirt.
Here's a guy that this
whole operation revolves around.
Nobody's been able
to get close to him.
It was amazing to see
a doctor refer to Chris George
as the medical expert.
I found myself in a hallway,
one-on-one with Chris.
And I'm thinking,
"Don't screw this up."
One minute or two minutes
of interaction with a main target.
You don't know
if you're gonna get it again.
So I told him I didn't know
I can't say, you know, I drink.
And he's like,
"Yeah, you can't say that, man."
He gave me directions
to Executive, Dianna's clinic.
Took out his wallet,
gave me my money back
and he said,
"Look, go to this clinic."
He made a phone call to Dianna.
Said, "Hey, I'm sending
this guy up to you."
And I'm like, "Man, I'm real sorry.
Are they gonna give me
a hard time up there?"
He goes, "No, they're not
gonna give you a hard time.
It's all the same.
It's all the same thing."
We went back to the office,
and there's a long hallway.
I could see Jen walking towards me.
And I'm just thinking, "Oh, sh*t."
Like, she is gonna chew me out.
And she came up
and gave me the biggest bear hug
just about lift me off the ground.
And she says, "You did it.
Oh, my god, you did it."
This was a key bit of evidence
that we needed.
That links Chris George
to Executive Pain.
And we also have the evidence
that Chris George
is using his cell phone
to conduct illegal activity.
The money out of his wallet,
having a doctor
get permission from Chris
when that should be on the doctor.
You know, I started putting
it together, going, "Wow."
We knew we had Executive Pain.
We knew Dianna ran it.
But we didn't know the relationship
between the two.
The Executive Pain
was open for the "rejects."
He didn't want any of his patients
going to his competitors.
He wanted to maintain
all the money for himself.
One day, I come into work
and patients are constantly asking me
when I was opening the new clinic
in Jacksonville.
And were like,
"You called me the other day."
And I said, "I called you?"
So I decided to call the number
and I said, "Hey, I'm looking
for Derik from the pain clinic."
"Yeah, that's me."
"What do you look like, man?"
He said, "Yeah, I'm a big guy
with tattoos and stuff."
I said, "Man, I don't know
what the f*ck's going on, buddy
but that's me.
Why are you pretending to be me?
What the f*ck is going on here?"
Chris looked up the address.
Looked up the cooperation
and one of the owners
was Pete Tyndale.
And the other owner was Zach Rose.
I'm watching all these patients
drive from out of state.
They're coming all the way
to Palm Beach
Fort Lauderdale, Miami.
And I thought, "Why don't I just
open one right in Jacksonville?"
That's the first city you come to
when you cross the state line.
They could save six or seven hours
of drive time.
Everyone was using billboards
or they'd pay referral fees
or they would give out gas cards
to get people
to come to their clinics.
And I thought,
the MRI is the key to all this.
Pete had at least 50,000 people
that had been scanned
and he had their phone numbers
and he had their addresses.
Well, I said, "Hey, Pete,
I want to buy your patient list."
He goes, "Give me 25%
of one of your clinics."
I said, "Done."
I set up this call center.
It was just a backroom
in a pain clinic.
It was like a little 10x8 room,
and I put a few phones in there
and we would just start
pounding them things.
Me and a buddy of mine named Mike.
He would just outright lie.
"Oh, yeah,
this is American Pain, man.
We moved. Oh, we didn't tell you?
They're closed. Don't even go there.
Just come right here."
And I'm thinking, "Whatever works,
man, I don't care," you know?
They come in and they said,
"Who's Zach?" I said, "I am."
"I'm Chris George." "Okay."
"I own American Pain." "Okay."
"You're seeing my patients."
I said, "You don't own
any of these patients, man.
They're gonna go
where they want to go.
I can't help it
if my clinic's closer.
Should have thought of that, buddy."
And that pissed him off.
He goes, "If you don't give me 50%
I'm burning this place
to the ground."
I said, "It ain't going down
like that here."
And I pulled a g*n
from my waistband, pointed at him
laid him and his whole entourage
on the ground.
The cops get there, and I said
"Yeah, I pulled a g*n on him.
Of course, I did.
They come in, shake my business
down like they're the mob.
They're not getting sh*t from me."
And these guys just lied.
If I was gonna ask for anything,
it'd be all their money.
'Cause all their money
is coming from my patients.
The police arrested,
you know, myself, Derik
and two of my other friends,
you know, for extortion.
Jacksonville Pain showed us
Chris George was expanding.
He didn't want to just be the leader
of pain clinics in South Florida.
He wanted to be the leader
of pain clinics in all of Florida.
Federal investigations are thorough
but they're not quick.
We dot our I's and we cross our T's.
But you have to balance
the amount of time you're spending
with the urgency
of what's happening in front of you.
There was one particular moment.
Chris is talking to Derik Nolan
about some people
who'd been in an accident.
They left his facility,
they were high on dr*gs
and they got hit by a train
while trying to cross
the train track in their car.
They tried to f*cking weave
through a railroad crossing
and got hit
by a f*cking train yesterday.
And what'd it say?
Two of them are dead.
One of them's in critical condition.
No, it didn't say it,
but it will tomorrow.
It will tomorrow, that there was Roxy
scattered throughout the car.
Right, right, exploded.
"You got to be an idiot
to be hit by a train."
And that was the end
of the conversation.
It's chilling.
It's chilling to hear somebody
with no regard for human life
and their only regard is profit.
I guess I...
I had a whole new appreciation
that day
for how just heartless
and ruthless he was.
I went to the hospital
where the individual
who survived the crash was.
They were still in a semi coma.
We were, of course, wanting to talk
to them about the pills that they got
while they were going
to American Pain.
But we never had that opportunity.
There was another instance where
we were interviewing an individual
who came to South Florida
with three people
and were in a terrible,
terrible accident.
Part of his face was severed
in the car accident.
And I asked him, why come
all the way to South Florida?
And he could barely move his mouth
'cause he was all bandaged up.
And he said, "Because it's like
a candy store down there.
It's worth it."
And he said, "As soon as I get
out of here, I'm gonna go back."
And I remember thinking,
"How are we ever gonna stop this?"
You just slide it from the bottom
and it skids down,
and then you chase the smoke.
Roxies, you can smoke them,
snort them, you can bang them
you can take them,
and you're gonna feel them.
I've always taken,
you know, pain pills
'cause I have a bad back and stuff
but the Roxies,
they're something else.
Once you take one, oh, my god.
The next day, if you don't take one,
you're stomach's hurting.
I mean, they're that addictive.
Everybody got addicted
to these pills. Everyone I knew.
People were losing their homes,
selling their kids' food stamps
stealing their Christmas presents.
They'd shoplift.
Some of them prostituted
their self out
just to get those pills.
Even my dad, which never did dope,
never did dr*gs, ever.
He got addicted to Roxies.
And he overdosed and d*ed.
When I sold coke, it was a party.
Everybody was at the bars.
But with the pills, it was do or die.
You were gonna be so sick
if you didn't get it.
You'd do anything.
I did pain pills before,
but the Roxies got me.
I got into getting on them
pretty bad.
I got to where I couldn't sleep
for three hours
without having to get up
and snort some pills.
And I started doing all my profit.
Like, I was probably doing,
like, 20 to 30 a day.
It was bad.
It got to where I lost everything.
I lost everything
before I even got indicted.
My daughter overdosed on pain pills.
When she was 16 months old,
on Roxies.
She got a hold of my prescription.
Yeah, and she almost d*ed.
You know, when things are going good,
you don't want to stop doing them.
There was no reason
to stop at that time.
Chris and Jeff,
they wanted the best of stuff.
Jeff had a Lamborghini.
Chris gets an unbelievable truck.
Fancy watches, Jet skis.
Jeff had a 50-foot boat.
They did it all.
I bought three houses
and was in the process
of buying eight more.
And they were mostly
just for my friends to live in.
Going to the Super Bowl, vacations,
concerts, and just going out.
One wanted to be better
than the other.
Chris wanted to be the biggest,
the best, and he achieved it.
I was making roughly $500,000 a week.
Profit. I'm just talking profit.
I've always had a fantasy
of flying helicopters.
After my first clinic,
I just ended up getting one.
And, man, I'd fly that thing
all over the place.
I landed one time at a KFC
and we walked into that place
to grab some chicken
and these girls were like,
"Who in the hell is this dude, man?"
I was making so much
that I turned a blind eye
towards everything
that was happening.
I knew people were dying.
I knew people were dying
that were going to my clinics.
I would justify it all.
They were gonna die no matter what
whether they came here or not.
They were gonna end up
going somewhere else.
And would've, you know...
I just justified all my actions,
you know?
Because I was making
that kind of money.
It was just the drug dealing game
times 10, times 1,000.
Get 150,000 pills fronted to you.
You can have it COD.
By the time you were writing them
a check, you'd sold all them pills.
And with Lou Fisher
as my "compliance officer"
and he was also a compliance officer
for all these distributors...
I mean,
what Lou Fisher said was golden.
I wasn't getting paid by the clinics.
The wholesaler was paying me.
Right. But I had no... no hesitation
to recommend not to sell.
No, I never...
They never argued with me.
I gave them the information.
They said thank you.
Give them the report.
They mailed me a check.
I was done with it.
Right now, we're where
the pain clinic used to be.
Zach Rose ran it.
My computer shop was over there
right next door
to the attorney's office.
I had a realtor.
I said, "Hey, do you know anybody
that does computer networks
and security cameras?"
He said, "There's this guy
just right down the street."
So I went and talked to John.
Seemed like a real nice guy.
He sets up my stuff,
everything's cool.
When they opened,
there was hundreds of people
crossing Cassat Avenue
every day, getting dr*gs.
It was ruining our neighborhood.
My office received a telephone call
from an individual
who had information
pertaining to a pain clinic.
I had heard about pill mills,
primarily down in South Florida.
I did not know this was happening
in Jacksonville.
The source was hired by the owner
of the pill mill, Zachary Rose.
So, the source
had a day to day involvement
with the pain clinic.
The very first time
that I put on the wire
I thought, "You can't hide it.
They're gonna see it."
But Bruce said, "If there's a problem
you just hit the floor,
and we're coming in."
This particular source was able
to ask the question and sit back
and these people buried themselves.
They never questioned me,
never tried to stop me.
No one said a word to me, ever.
What are these people
gonna talk about?
I determined it would be money.
I didn't see any of them with remorse
or any of it bothered them.
They didn't care.
- Did you read the paper today?
- No.
Of course, they have
to mention his mom listed
as operator of a clinic in Boca.
At that time, I was drinking a lot.
I was pretty miserable
in my own life with Chris.
But that's where it pretty much
started getting real bad for us.
What the f*ck do you think
I am here for?
For my f*cking own health?
I don't understand
what you're talking about.
Stop thinking that you are
f*cking above everything else.
You are nobody. Everybody says it.
Everybody knows it. You are nothing.
And when you're behind bars,
you're not gonna be anybody.
- You are going no f*cking where.
- And where are you going?
Where are you going?
Tell me where you're going, Chris.
Tell me where you're gonna be
in the next f*cking ten years.
Because I would really...
I would really like to know.
I don't know
what my future is gonna be like.
If you had a legitimate job,
like, say... say, for instance
- What, like being a stripper?
- Say for instance...
You know what, Jeff?
At least I got a f*cking job.
Do you have one?
- I'm retired.
- Do you have one?
You're retired?
- You're a f*cking loser.
- I'm retired.
And you have nothing
and you're going to prison.
f*ck you.
All our relationship was about was me
running this business for him.
I was just going to work
to bring him home money.
American Pain was growing.
And kept growing
throughout the investigation.
What's your use?
The bank...
It's so ridiculous.
When we opened up that...
that monster office in Lakeworth
we just had it down to a science.
Everybody knew their role.
The doctors were down to 45 seconds
to 3 minutes with each patient.
We was just boom...
you're in and out.
Always got what you needed.
I had a national extension plan.
The first office in Georgia
was already set up, it was running.
And then we had future ones planned
in Texas and then Missouri.
Detroit, Philadelphia, and Boston.
The plans were in the works to really
take over the whole country.
In a few years we ran the clinics
we prescribed
about half a billion pills.
We were on track to get to a billion.
And probably double
every year after that.
So then I was looking to buy
a pharmaceutical wholesaler.
And also, how to start
my own drug manufacturing company.
To make my own oxycodone.
Part of the... the franchise plan
was to buy a bank.
Because the banks were a huge problem
taking in so much cash.
The clinics were growing
out of control.
And they needed to be shut down.
The FBI, DEA, IRS
and the Broward and Palm Beach
County Sheriff Office's
raided American Pain clinic
early Wednesday.
Agents were also raiding
at least two other clinics
owned by Jeff George
or his family members.
We had well over 200 federal agents
and at least that in local police.
We showed up to Chris's house
to serve the search warrants.
He was not there.
My first thought is,
where in the hell is Chris George at
because he is not at home
and we're there
at five o'clock in the morning.
His competition
was handing flyers out
so he was basically
gonna go and stop them.
So I was posing as a patient.
Chris gave me this recording thing
and we went out to some hotel
to get this guy,
to try to set him up.
So they were actually out conducting
surveillance on competitors.
Unbelievable.
We end up calling Chris George
on the phone.
We breached the entrance.
Initiated the search.
We seize a small amount of cash,
some documents.
We did find three firearms.
Chris is a convicted felon
he's not supposed to have
any firearms in his house.
Search warrants
are always enlightening.
You find things
you never expected to find.
And oddly in his garage
he had what looked to be
a white supremacist or n*zi flag.
I'd never seen one of those
in somebody's house before.
Obviously, people like that
are not going to invite me
into their homes, but I'd never seen
one like that before.
Even though Chris was an avowed
white supremacist
some of the doctors
that worked for him were black
some were Jewish.
This is America, right?
Green is more important
than any other color.
Denise woke up first
and somebody was walking around
the side of the house.
And I looked
and I saw a woman with a g*n
and I'm going, "Ah, crap."
When I heard that phone call
I called one of the investigators
out there
I said, "Go check the attic."
And the investigator found
three safes
with over $4 million in them.
Babe, this isn't good at all.
I have a drug dealer
who's a steroid using,
white supremacist
who's paranoid and freaking out.
And we found a box of amm*nit*on
in a different caliber than the g*ns.
So I knew that
there's probably another firearm
that was unaccounted for
and I was hoping to God
that he didn't have it with him.
Because the George brothers
had been living
such an outlandish lifestyle
for so long
and they had gotten away with so much
we wanted Chris to feel like
there was no place to hide.
Yeah?
So, at some point, did they...
did they show you a photograph?
A compromising photograph of Chris?
Oh, that was a story I made up.
I made that up.
He was at his lowest point.
I wanted to mess with him
a little more.
See if I could get
the truth out of him
before I went to jail for him.
Shocker.
Yeah, if I was gonna face
a sentence for him, be a man.
Say what's real.
Don't be a jackwagon.
Major new developments today
in the case against one of our area's
biggest prescription drug kingpins.
The twin brothers
Jeff and Christopher George.
Now facing allegations
of violent crimes...
For running one of the largest
illegal prescription drug networks...
Chuck Jarczyski
couldn't believe prosecutors found
four and a half million dollars
in his neighbor's home.
They did? Holy smokes!
Two brothers, their mother,
and one of the men's wives
have all pleaded guilty
to taking part
in a massive illegal drug network.
Jeff George pleaded guilty today
to a racketeering conspiracy charge
in federal court.
Guilty to conspiracy
to commit wire fraud.
Guilty to second degree m*rder
in connection with overdose deaths...
Pill mill mastermind Jeff George
will spend the next 15 years
behind bars.
I got an alert on my phone
that said my bank account
was 99 million in the negative.
And I thought
what the hell is going on?
I didn't think nothing of it.
I go into McDonald's
and I order a hotcakes and sausage.
Insufficient funds.
Second bank card, declined.
Third bank card, declined.
I'm like, what in the hell?
I call my personal banker,
and she said
"It's the US Marshals.
They have a hold on your account."
I said, "What?"
And I just went outside
and I just threw up
in the parking lot of McDonald's.
I was sick.
John Friskey made it
to where the hard drives
kept breaking on purpose.
So he would come take my hard drives
out of the computer, put new ones in.
He'd turn them hard drives
into the DEA
and they were just stealing evidence,
stealing evidence.
I went to prison for seven years.
Now I'm on probation.
Vinnie, I think got 20 or 25 years.
They raided all his clinics,
took all his cars.
The DEA was hauling all
different cars out of his warehouse.
That truck was right there, he still
kept that thing till the very end.
- You know Pete Tyndale?
- Ah, Parking Lot Pete.
We didn't feel
that we had enough evidence
to charge him as part
of the conspiracy at the time.
But Pete being Pete,
he didn't learn his lesson.
He'd opened up a pain clinic
in Tennessee and, unfortunately
he'll probably be in prison
for the rest of his life for that.
With the trial lost.
Once the real heavy raids
were going on, everybody dropped me.
Then the state of Florida
stopped them from dispensing.
They didn't need me anymore.
Then I got into the speaking side
of it with Janssen Pharmaceutical.
Janssen made something
called fentanyl.
It's a patch.
It's dangerous, yes.
The drug can k*ll you,
but it can help you, too.
To me, it was just
another hustle, man.
But these guys, they're all scumbags.
They're all scum of the earth.
I was a scumbag. I was a criminal.
I assisted in the demise
of the American culture.
You know, looking back at my growth,
you know, I'm a f*cking assh*le.
And f*ck me back then
along with all these other guys.
Man, I don't like the fact that
I lost the majority of my adult life.
The juice definitely
wasn't worth the squeeze now.
Served ten years.
You know, I've been home
for two days.
It's been about 48 hours
I've been free with my jewelry.
My Aunt Pat, she was getting
a $500 a month disability check
and she decided to put $60,000 down
on a $200,000 home.
And that's what got the feds
looking at us, all of us.
They called me a drug lord.
Judge considered me the kingpin.
I don't believe in snitching
but I did what I felt was best
for me and my family.
Me and Whitney
both went down there and testified.
I was in the dorm with Dianna George
and her mother-in-law.
They was kinda stuck up,
but they was cool.
You know,
we played cards together every day.
And I was like, "Hey...
You was at the doctor's office."
And she was like,
"I owned the doctor's office."
And I was like,
"Okay, that's why you're here."
The mother-in-law,
they called her Gangster Granny.
She was real naive.
She really doesn't believe
she did anything wrong.
But, I mean, I think that it was
an eye opener for her, for sure.
Chris wouldn't take a plea.
He just kept saying,
"I didn't do anything.
I'm gonna plead not guilty."
So, they charged Denice
and Dianna with wire fraud
which was a potential
five year maximum sentence.
And the wire fraud was nothing more
than a questionnaire.
It was about how many
out of state patients we had
versus how many
in state patients we had.
It was... it was a lie.
It was a lie.
I met Chris on the van
and I didn't like him.
I don't like the fact that
he let his mom go to prison
for any amount of time.
I don't care if she only did do
a couple of years.
Still, it's your mama.
When I went to jail, I was relieved
that I was gonna detox.
I went through the worst hell
you could imagine.
I laid in a medical cell
for three days straight
naked, sh1tting,
throwing up constantly.
And I was just praying like,
"If there's a god
just let me die right here."
I was ready.
I was ready to be done off the pills.
I mean, those things
were k*lling me slowly.
And they were k*lling
a lot of people.
I mean, I've seen
a lot of people die from them.
People that were friends of mine
that d*ed from the dr*gs I sold them.
We actually reviewed
the patient files that we seized
from the George brothers' clinics.
And then we started making
phone calls to sheriff's departments
and to police departments
around the country.
We pulled approximately 300 names
from the patient files that we seized
a random sampling of people.
And we realized that 10%
of that random 300
once we checked, were deceased.
So if you extrapolate
that out to 28,000 patient files
you're talking about
almost 3,000 dead
from this one organization alone.
And that's just of the people
that went to the clinic.
That's not... That doesn't include
the secondary
or even the tertiary drug market.
Most of these customers
from these facilities
who "d*ed" d*ed of overdose.
And the rest d*ed of accidents.
Thanks to the George brothers
and their industry
we've lost thousands,
tens of thousands of Americans.
And you can't help but think about
the great number of citizens
that gave their lives
to this epidemic.
When the George brothers
got busted in Florida, it hurt us.
It hurt us bad.
The whole of Louisville got sick,
and the crime rate went really high.
There's no pills.
And you ride around looking,
no pills.
That's when heroin came in.
I see friends of mine,
they're homeless
holding signs, sh**ting heroin now.
And every one of them
started out on Roxies.
Being an addict,
it takes a toll on you.
I've been locked up in
Louisville Metro 37 different times.
I had two kids that was adopted
when I was in federal prison.
I got to see them one time, and then
they went through with adoption.
Lord, I ask that you be with
my friend as she walks out this door.
Help her to be the person that
you would have her to be, Lord...
I don't want
to keep living this life.
I don't want to keep going to jail.
All right, give me a hug.
My daughter, I hope that she comes
to look for me soon.
And when she comes and finds me,
I don't want her to see
a needle junkie that's in jail.
I want, you know, I want to...
I want to have my sh*t together.
I had heard that...
that you had someone close to you
who is either addicted or...
is that true?
And can you explain that?
Yeah, I'd rather not talk about that.
Sorry, John.
Oh, no, I was just...
wasn't prepared for it.
It's all right.
Well, I lost a son to it.
It doesn't ever go away.
He had a car accident in Tennessee
lost his spleen,
and was in a lot of pain.
He got medicine from the pill mills
and I didn't know
they were pill mills.
I didn't even know
he was getting medicine.
He OD'd on it.
You have a lot of that.
Zach moved next door to me, and...
and I... I was happy
to shut him down.
You got to end it.
You got to end these people.
You got to put them out of business.
And it's everybody's job to do it.
Everybody's.
I believe.
The industry, the doctors,
the drugstores, and me
we were all drug dealers
'cause everybody knew
what the other was doing.
If you didn't, you were stupid.
I mean, look at the people
that owned the clinics.
Come on.
The manufacturers
were making billions of pills.
Think they didn't know?
The doctors turned a blind eye.
The owners turned a blind eye.
The pharmacists turned a blind eye.
The distributors turned a blind eye.
And everyone just lined
their pockets full of money.
I mean, don't get me wrong
they definitely should have came
after us.
But they didn't want to go
after big pharmacy.
They didn't want to go
after the drug distributors.
They just wanted us. We're nobody.
The money we made is peanuts
compared to what big pharma's made
over the years
basically ruining people's lives.
So, after all this
Florida finally puts regulations
and controls in place.
Why do you think
it took them so long?
- Pass?
- Pass on that one.
I think it's politics, dude
and I don't want to
get involved with that.
I don't know why they pushed
the boundaries the way they did.
You know, the five cent
psychologists there will tell you
"Oh, they had no consequences"
or you're gonna hear,
"They were spoiled rich kids."
Why I think? I don't know.
I... I don't know. I don't know.
Chris is finally
getting out of prison.
After over ten years.
It's very exciting for all of us.
I just want him
to come home to something...
he'll be surprised by.
He deserves it. He really does.
A lot of emotions going wild
this morning. But I'm excited.
I've been waiting for this
for a long time.
I'm not answering
a phone call right now.
Oh, my god, that's him. Oh, my god.
Oh, my god.
Oh, my god!
Get out of the way.
In the end, I pled out to one count
of racketeering conspiracy
and was sentenced
to 17 1/2 years in federal prison.
I end up serving 11 years.
- This is good.
- It's good.
My brother Jeff pled out to
racketeering conspiracy, same as me
and got 15 1/2 years
in the federal system.
But he was also charged with m*rder
for a patient who overdosed
and got 20 years for that charge
which is why
he's still in prison now.
I definitely wish people didn't die
from the medication.
You know, I don't know
why certain people did die.
But in the end,
it's their responsibility.
They're responsible
for themselves, I'm not.
They said they were in pain
to my doctors.
They got an MRI showing
they were in pain.
My doctors gave them medication.
Then what they did with that
is out of my hands.
Addiction in this country
has always been here.
So I don't think we actually
created more addicts.
They were already here.
They just had an easier way
to get their dr*gs, and a safer way.
Now they don't even know
what they're getting
and now they die
at three times the rate.
I can't say that
I'm responsible for it.
They're responsible for causing
the problem in the country.
They're the ones
that came there and drove
however many miles they drove,
600 miles or 1,000 miles.
They're the ones that did this.
The patients are the ones that caused
whatever problems we have here.
They act like I'm the bag guy here
'cause I owned a business.
But I didn't prescribe one, one pill.
You know, in this country,
anybody can open a business.
That's the good thing about it.
There's a lot of things I want
to look into now that I'm out.
You know,
things have changed out here
and I want to find out, you know
what the best business
would be to open.
You know, just deciding,
you know, what to do.
We already have a few things going on
in the real estate industry.
Derik and I are gonna start
a business together building homes.
And we're getting everything
set up for that right now.
If there's another housing crisis
or something like that
we may have to venture back
into the medical field.
What's new in your life?
What's happened since I last saw you?
Well, I got married.
My wife delivered twin boys.
Your own stepfather told me
not to name them Chris and Jeff.
That would be pretty funny, I guess.
Yeah.
I'm just keeping my options open.
Gonna figure something
out here real soon.