Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, Chris and Jeff George, twin brothers, say

they help patients manage pain.

But all they do is push pills, deadly addictive pills.

Running the largest pill mill in the U .S., the twins rake in $40 million in

just over two years.

They had so much cash in these clinics, they kept the cash in garbage bags.

Convinced it's all legal, Chris even brings his wife into the game.

I trusted him.

I shouldn't have. And the patients pay not just with money, but also with their

lives. They gave him two deadly pills that were even more deadly when they

combined. They did it on purpose, and it killed someone.

Wellington, Florida, in Palm Beach County, is known for horse shows and

tournaments and soaring property values.

It is here where twin brothers Chris and Jeff George start life in the lap of

luxury. Their father, John George, owns a hugely successful home building

business and gives his boys all they could ever need.

He is proud of them. Chris and Jeff are both very, very intelligent. They

weren't. great students because they played too much. And they're both very,

how do you say, entrepreneurial.

And that's what will get them in trouble.

From the start, the George twins make their own rules and like to take

Did I see him as overly mischievous?

Yes. They certainly pushed the envelope as they were children.

Nothing...

Terribly bad, but certainly mischievous, yeah.

But Palm Beach County Sheriff reports show more serious problems.

Arrests for aggravated assault, possession of stolen property, domestic

violence. Jeff got kicked out of a number of schools in high school, and

were troublemakers.

At first, the twins are into football and wrestling, and then move into

bodybuilding that leads to steroids. And after graduation?

One more arrest.

Chris was arrested in his early 20s for receiving anabolic steroids

and actually received an eight -month prison sentence.

Now a convicted felon, Chris goes to work for his father and learns how to

business. He also spends time at strip clubs where he meets a dancer named

Diana, his future wife.

At that time, I thought he was...

Completely pathetic.

Just like a lost young kid, you know, that really didn't know who he was, what

direction he was going in, and hungry for attention.

Two years later, the real estate market in Florida crashes.

Chris's future is up for grabs.

He and Diana move in with Jeff, who is still causing trouble.

Now he is in an open battle with his neighbors over his truck, a monster

that he parks illegally in his front yard.

When he is fined more than $15 ,000, he simply ignores the tickets.

He didn't care. He basically sort of lived a life of going to the gym, going

strip clubs, working, and he lived like a slob.

At this point, Jeff is running his own company, South Beach Rejuvenation, an

online business that sells steroids.

But Jeff and Chris soon learn that the real money is in pain management.

FBI Special Agent Kurt McKenzie becomes an expert on the George brothers'

operation.

Chris and his brother Jeff met a corrupt physician who taught the both of them

how to set up a pain clinic to make money and how to maximize your profits

selling drugs.

Legal drug dealing is what they were taught.

The drug the doctor recommends is oxycodone, a powerfully addictive

is actually synthetic heroin.

and it is creating an epidemic of addiction across the country.

In Virginia, 28 deaths by overdose in two years.

Kentucky, 59 deaths by overdose in the last year.

Maine, 10 deaths, 156 arrests this year.

Most states have a system that monitors the pills, but not Florida.

In fact, Florida laws are so lax, there is nothing to stop Chris George, a

convicted felon with no medical experience, from opening a pain clinic

selling powerfully addictive narcotics.

And so while Jeff sticks with steroids, Chris decides to move ahead with the

oxycodone business.

He realized that this was something that people were wanting, and he realized

that it was a product that he could provide for them. And given the laws in

state of Florida at the time, he could do so.

Chris chooses busy Oakland Park Boulevard north of Fort Lauderdale as

location for his clinic.

Next, he needs to find some doctors.

Pain management is really a highly specialized field.

Specialists are found through firms that market for specialists.

But Chris has a different idea.

They went about getting doctors by advertising Craigslist.

Craigslist.

He simply places an ad, MD with DEA license needed for busy pain clinic, and

adds a stunning attraction.

make up to $400 an hour.

Sure enough, the responses pour in.

Several of the doctors were former emergency room physicians.

One of them was a former proctologist.

One was a former plastic surgeon. The one thing they all had in common was

wanted to make money quickly.

At the start of 2008, there are just a few pain clinics in Florida.

Chris is making it up as he goes.

He pays the doctors $1 ,000 to use their DEA licenses to order pills from

wholesalers. And as for legitimate -looking medical forms... At one point,

sort of walked into another pain clinic and simply took the paperwork that that

pain clinic used and then sort of cut and pasted their names on top of it and

started using that.

Finally, by February, Chris is ready to open.

He calls his business South Florida Pain Clinic.

The doctor that had given me this idea, he told him, this is what we do and this

is how it's going to be and it's going to be great.

Don't worry, they will come.

Next on American Greed, a new kind of drugstore opens in a Florida strip mall.

I'm just like, this ain't nothing but a drug deal, you know, kind of legal.

In February 2008 in Broward County, Florida, a new chapter in prescription

addiction begins when Chris George's South Florida Pain Clinic opens for

business. South Florida Pain was an experiment.

It was saying, let's see if we can do this and how does this work. So this was

their learning experience. This was their starter clinic.

And what a way to start with a bang.

The first day they maybe had seven or eight patients.

By three weeks in, they were treating, you know, probably 30, 40, 50 patients,

you know. It got to be so many people that they were parking in our parking

the McDonald's parking lot.

Across the street, Mark, who owns a billiard business, watches in amazement

the business explodes.

I arrived on a rainy thunderstorm morning. There was 14 vehicles and over

people out the front door waiting to go in. And that's when I was like, this is

pretty crazy.

It just exploded because there was this addict network grapevine that spread

the news that there was a place that was churning out pills.

One of the people plugged into that grapevine is Steve Mazza.

Now head of the catering department for a non -profit organization,

Mazza started using drugs as a teenager.

Back then, it wasn't like today. It was like pot, alcohol, Quaaludes, you

know, some pills and cocaine.

By 2008, he has been introduced to oxycodone and knows how addictive it is.

You don't care about nothing else. You really, you might think you care about

other things, but you don't. If you have your pills, then you're okay. You can

care about other things. But if you don't have them pills, your main concern

is getting more pills.

A friend tells him about South Florida pain.

I was nervous because I've never been to a pain clinic.

And so I was more or less like, are you sure?

But he quickly learns there is nothing to fear.

They called my name, went back, seen the doctor, and the doctor asked me where

it hurts. I told him I don't think I talked to him for more than a minute and

half, and he was already writing the prescriptions out for 280 oxycodones, 30

milligrams.

What separated?

Real doctors from what these people did, it's everybody who came through those

doors. Everybody got the same drugs in roughly the same amounts every single

time, and nobody was ever diagnosed with anything.

And because Florida law allows clinics to dispense the pills they prescribe,

patients walk out the door with hundreds of pills.

It was extremely easy, and I'm just like, this ain't nothing but a drug

you know, kind of legal.

Mazza says he pays 90 cents a pill inside the clinic, but out on the

pills are worth a lot more.

We had people, friends, actually the guy that introduced us to the stuff, that

we would sell him 100 pills for $7 apiece.

Make 700 bucks right off of the top. That would pay for the doctor visit.

Then you would still have 180 pills left for yourself.

What the clinic is selling is a generic oxycodone, small blue pills that are

water -soluble, just what the addicts want.

And at that time, it was that roxycodone brand, because they could immediately

crush them, water -soluble, put them into a syringe, shoot it up, snort it,

other things, where they get that immediate influx of the oxycodone into

system. They had to have security outside the pain clinic to make people

their cars and actually leave the parking lot. Because if they didn't

parking lot, they knew they were in their cars snorting their pills or

their pills. They weren't just getting in the car and leaving like a normal

doctor's office.

Clearly, this is not a normal doctor's office.

These were young guys having a good time. They weren't...

particularly serious about this business at all in the early going.

I mean, Chris thought it was kind of a lark.

The police are called constantly by neighbors complaining of parking

and by patients who say their pills were stolen. And along with the cops come

reporters. In July, Fort Lauderdale's Sun Sentinel brings unwanted attention

the clinic.

Chris decides he needs to move, get a bigger place with more parking.

But his customers continued to anger the neighbors.

Being drug abusers and drug addicts, a lot of the activity they brought with

them is what you'd expect from drug abusers and drug addicts.

Prostitution, theft, fighting in the parking lots, urinating.

So all the surrounding businesses were constantly complaining to local law

enforcement.

Finally, it's clear that it's time to start again, this time even bigger and

with a new name.

South Florida pain had become this sort of symbol of overprescribing and

drug addiction. And he decided that he needed to change the name to something

else that wouldn't be associated with that. And he decided a good name would

American pain.

Next on American Greed, what to do with all that money.

They said we need large, you know, garbage cans and receptacles, you know,

almost lawn or trash bags.

to put the cash in.

In early 2008, more than 1 ,000 miles from South Florida and eastern Kentucky,

local law enforcement officers see a strange price shift in the street value

prescription pills.

Normally when you talk about oxycodone trafficking throughout Appalachia, a 30

milligram tablet would cost you $30 on the street. We were getting reports that

a 30 milligram tablet was going for as little as $10 apiece on the street.

And soon the reason becomes clear.

Pills are pouring into Appalachia from just one state.

Law enforcement officers were making a tremendous amount of drug buys,

undercover drug buys, and then would find prescription bottles.

that were given to them by Florida physicians, and that became a recurring

scenario in every search that was conducted.

It's terrible news.

More pills for a part of the country that has had a devastating oxycodone

addiction problem for years.

You have coal miners in that area, and you have a lot of individuals who ended

up with lung cancer, black lung disease.

And the pill was heavily marketed in that area to physicians as something

could be prescribed to patients to treat the pain associated with those various

diseases.

Unfortunately, individuals became very quickly addicted to the medication and

sought out the medication in various ways.

The pharmaceutical company's marketing campaign spells disaster as an epidemic

of addiction spreads throughout the area.

How many people here have actually been affected by OxyContin in one form or

another? People who have babies on their hips.

Women. Do you know where I can get some pills at?

And, you know, you can't expect your kids to be raised good when you're doing

yourself.

A whole generation basically lost their parents or the young children of the 18

to 25 -year -olds were just taken away because of the problem.

And so the state clamps down.

instituting a monitoring system that makes it hard for addicts to get pills

multiple doctors in the area.

But Florida does not have a monitoring system, and so addicts can collect as

many pills as they want if they go to Florida.

And that's why Interstate 75 from Kentucky to Florida becomes known as Oxy

Express, as thousands of drug seekers head straight to Chris George's American

Pain.

They were the number one provider for these prescription pills that were being

refilled here in Kentucky.

They were the hot topic. Everybody went to American Pain.

And soon, Chris's success is inspiring other businesses.

We had an airline that had begun sponsoring direct flights from

Virginia to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There was a demand for quick travel,

turnaround to get down there and get back.

Some making the trip are individuals supporting their own addiction, but many

are drug dealers who cover the addict's costs, known as a sponsor.

He would pay all their expenses. He would pay for their gas if they took

own vehicle. He would pay for their food. He would pay for their cigarettes,

for their lodging. He would even pay for their doctor's office visit, and he

would pay to have the prescriptions filled.

And then the patient splits the supply of pills with the sponsor.

With a split of the pills, giving 50 % to the drug seeker that goes into the

clinic, the sponsor could still easily make $5 ,000 cash on this per person.

You take five people down in a minivan, you know the sponsor can clear $25 ,000

on one trip.

It was unlike other types of drug networks because

anyone could get in.

You know, if you had enough money to just get down to Florida and get back,

could make several thousand dollars.

And because American Pain doesn't take insurance or Medicaid, every one of

people walks into the door of the clinic with a wad of cash.

They pay $150 for the doctor visit and as much as $1 ,200 for the pills.

So the cash drawers were being filled up within an hour or less.

And they quickly realized that that alone wasn't going to cut it.

So they said, look, let's just put it in trash cans. We need large, you

know, garbage cans and receptacles to put the cash in after, you know, the

drawers would fill up.

But typically, banks are not comfortable with trash bags of money. And so Chris

is forced to keep the money moving.

There are a multitude of banks that they were rejected from and told, we don't

want your bits anymore.

And he would just pull his money out and go to the next one.

Some of Chris's cash goes to buying big ticket items.

Bigger toys, bigger boats, bigger cars, faster cars, faster boats,

odd trucks, things that I thought

was stupid.

But surprisingly, Chris is most interested in saving his money.

He liked to see it.

He liked to take the money, stack it up in a safe. I want to see it. I don't

want to fly somewhere and spend it.

He was all about just turning a profit, keeping it for himself, and

making sure it was there and that his future was secure.

These days, for Chris, the pain clinic is no longer a fun experiment.

The money is too good.

Now it's all business.

If he could have had it open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and had, you

know, people backing him to do so, he would have done it in a heartbeat.

I mean, I had people ask me, when is enough enough?

It's never enough for Chris, and it will never be enough.

That's for sure.

Next on American Greed, the real cost of doing business with the George

brothers.

Oh.

I had a call from a police officer saying that your son, Joseph Bartolucci,

found deceased.

At the end of 2008, Chris George is pulling in as much as $80 ,000 a day at

American Pain. And that inspires his brother, Jeff, to open his own pain

As Jeff sees the growth that continues with South Florida pain into American

pain, he's like, maybe this is something I should do. And he starts East Coast

Pain. In February 2009,

a 24 -year -old man named Joey Bartolucci makes an appointment at

A graduate of the University of Florida, Bartolucci hopes to become a paramedic,

but he has an addiction to pain meds.

He told me.

He talked to me about it. I was very proud of him, that he had the wisdom to

know that he had a problem and that he should seek help for his problem.

And he worked very hard to overcome it.

But on February 27th, Bartolucci is struggling.

And he walks into East Coast Pain and is given a prescription for 180 milligrams

of the opioid hydromorphone, known as Dilaudid, and another for an anxiety

medication.

The next day, his mother learns what happened.

Oh, I had a call from a police officer saying that I thought he was going to

that Joey had been arrested.

And he said, your son Joseph Bartolucci was found deceased today. And I just

totally freaked, hung up on him and just started screaming.

Joey Bartolucci is found dead in his apartment.

The coroner rules his death an accidental overdose.

His sister disagrees.

It wasn't just an accident that they accidentally created the

greedy business.

They gave him two deadly pills that were even more deadly when they were

combined. They did it on purpose, and it killed someone.

When the story of Bartolucci's death makes the local paper, Jeff is quoted

saying it's not his problem. The clinic and the doctor can't control a patient

if they go home and do something stupid.

He adds, I bought my Lamborghini four years ago. If I wreck it, am I going to

hold the Lamborghini dealership responsible?

They just didn't care.

They just cared about money, cars, nice houses.

They're the scumbags.

They are the scumbags.

At this time in Florida, seven people each day end up like Joey Bartolucci,

of prescription overdose.

Many who come from out of state don't even make it home.

We got reports from highway patrol officers that they would find people

behind the wheels of their cars or dead in the passenger seat of the car at the

parking lot of a quick stop or in a motel along a highway.

And, of course, many die after they get home.

This is Linda.

If you look right here, found in her wallet was her appointment card from

American Pain, LLC.

We found all these pill bottles.

There's her flight information to where she flew down there before, her hotel

reservation, where she stayed.

Her family found her sitting at her desk with all this information laying there

around her. This is all just evidence of the devastation that places like

American Pain caused in eastern Kentucky.

And because local authorities are requesting medical records from American

people at the clinic know their patients are dying.

There is, in my mind, absolutely.

No way that anyone who worked at American Pain, whether it was someone

greeted you at the door, who filled your prescription in the pharmacy in the

back, who took you from one room to another to the physicians that did not

that people were dying as a result of coming to that clinic.

No question whatsoever.

The most difficult part of this for many is the role of the doctors.

We were all shocked. We could not believe.

that doctors would put profit above their concerns for whether or not their

patients lived or died. But that's exactly what they did.

And the money is incredible.

Most of the doctors are making more than $20 ,000 a week.

Well, they're simply drug dealers is all they are. They're no different than a

cartel member from South America. They killed a vast amount of people and made

lot of money doing so.

But it's not only the doctors who seem not to care.

It is also the man who hires them at American Pain.

Chris did not care anything about these people.

They were a means to make money. He could care less whether they lived or

Diana George says it's the money that changes Chris.

The greed.

You know, it's very different. You know, you could look at him and just see

that, like, the expression on his face was, I don't give a crap about anything

but myself.

You know, before he was different.

To me, he became a monster.

Some of the best evidence of how Chris feels comes in November 2009.

Three patients from Tennessee leaving American Pain come to a railroad

Just as the gates are coming down, inexplicably, the driver accelerates

tracks and then realizes the mistake.

But by that time, the gate had lowered so they couldn't pull back. And then the

driver...

It accelerated just as the train came in and hit them.

All three die.

What no one knows at American Pain is that at this point, Chris George is the

target of a federal investigation.

FBI undercover agents are videotaping inside the clinic, recording the

lining up for pills.

And Chris's cell phone has been tapped.

Agents are listening to his call.

When he hears the news of the train wreck, this is what he says.

Yeah, it's easy to get hit by a train.

As an agent, it's a very human moment when you hear individuals speak in that

regard about a fellow human being in such a crass way without having any

to, oh, my gosh, what are we doing here? And it was just another day.

It was just another day in the day of a life in American pain.

Next, no worries for the George twins.

They thought they were bulletproof, in essence, legally, that they were legal

drug dealers.

Hear how Chris George deals with competitors.

Go to cnbcprime .com slash American Greed.

Feeling greedy?

Want more than your share of behind -the -scenes dirt?

Follow us at American Greed TV on Twitter.

We'll be right back.

December 2009.

American Pain is holding its Christmas party at The Breakers, a luxury resort

Palm Beach.

That was actually the first time I felt like super glamorous. I spent $20 ,000

on gowns and, you know, more on shoes. And he was, you know, out there smoking

cigars, just talking to his pals.

The party has a Las Vegas theme.

Gambling tables are set up and funny money is printed.

They used little dollar bills, little fake dollar bills that had Chris

face where George Washington's face would normally be.

Chris appears to be on top of the world. In the two years since he opened his

first clinic, dozens have followed his lead.

There are now more pain clinics in Broward County than there are

That speaks volumes to me.

how lucrative this business, this industry was in South Florida. There

places for people to come get prescription drugs, oxycodone, than any

place in the country in one county in South Florida.

And Chris has expanded his own operation, opening a second clinic he

Executive Pain in West Palm Beach.

He asks his wife Diana to run the business.

At the end of the day, Chris George was in charge of the clinic unquestionably,

but you could tell in listening to her conversations with Chris George and in

going through the evidence afterward that Diana was very organized, and she

a lot of pride in running Executive Payne.

But now, looking back, Diana tells a different story.

I thought that people are dying, people are sick, people are abusing these

drugs.

I thought about it all the time.

You know, there would be young women that I would see come in. You could see

they had bracelets covering up, track marks on their arm, makeup and stuff.

I was ashamed at what I was doing, at what we were doing.

We were all responsible for that, all of us.

But Chris's businesses continue to grow, outpacing every other pain clinic in

the country.

One of the reasons that we honed in on Chris George and his clinics at the time

was of the top physicians that were dispensing oxycodone in the nation, five

them worked at American Pain.

But big is not big enough for Chris.

He wants to be the biggest of all.

And at the end of 2009, he sets his eyes on a 20 ,000 -square -foot former bank

building in Lake Worth, the future home for American Pain.

It was gigantic.

It was like windowless, you know, so it had this sort of fortress -like feel to

it. You know, it was sort of impermeable to the outside world.

I think that's how it felt.

American Pain in Lake Worth opens in January 2010 with two huge waiting rooms

that can accommodate as many as 500 patients.

It is later described as a Walmart of addiction.

It looked like a DMV.

Occasionally patients would pass out on the floor.

going through drug withdrawal.

Sometimes patients would be fighting each other over pills.

The clinic's own security cameras offered a bird's -eye view of how the

operation ran.

This is just when they walk in the door in the morning. Now, the sad part is you

can look at this video.

I guarantee you some of the people you're going to see on this video for

day, they're not alive anymore, just statistically.

Chris had lines on his floor because the ags came in, they were either so high

or they were so withdrawn, they didn't know where to go. And he had lines and

arrows pointed on the floor for them to go, go to Dr. So -and -so.

By now, Steve Mazza is a regular at Chris's clinics.

I went to the same doctors for month after month after month. I had a

appointment every week.

I was getting 200 pills from every doctor I seen each week.

And for him, American pain in Lake Worth is beyond belief.

I was shocked when they opened that building up. It was like a mini mall.

The whole wall, from the floor to the ceiling, a 30 -foot wall,

was all medical files.

The clinic system is remarkably efficient.

Chris George made it so easy for these guys. They didn't have to write anything

down. They just had to stamp it.

They had stamps in there with every possible concoction you can imagine.

They had the dosage units, the milligrams, the pharmaceutical drug

doctor just stamped it.

I actually got into an argument with one doctor, and I explained to him, I said,

this is not medicine.

When you were working in the emergency room, Setting broken bones and suturing

cuts, I couldn't do that. But I could do what you did here.

You handed out pills like a trained circus performer.

There's no effort in that. You did no medical evaluation of these patients.

never diagnosed an illness. You did nothing.

You rubber -stamped and handed out prescription -controlled substances.

That's all you did.

And to prove his case, McKenzie actually times patients' office visits.

The minute their foot crosses the door, I hit my stopwatch, I sit and time it.

The minute the patient's foot walks out of the door, I stop the stopwatch.

So on average, we would see examination times of less than four minutes, usually

closer to three minutes and 45 seconds.

Either way, every one of those patients got several hundred doses of narcotic

medication in less than four minutes.

They were a machine, a complete drug -pushing machine, just amazing.

And equally amazing to many is that this business operates in full light of day,

with a billboard and ads.

We spoke at length at family dinners, and I questioned it,

and they were... Absolutely fine.

Things were above board. It was wide open. Anyone could see it. It was

hidden. They had doctors that were real doctors working for them. They thought

they were bulletproof, in essence, legally, that they were legal drug

that they, if anybody was going to be held responsible, it was going to be the

doctors, because they were the ones with the medical license and with the DEA

license to prescribe the controlled substances.

I trusted him, and I shouldn't have when it came to that part.

You know, I always believed him. You know, I'm like, is this right? Is it

Is what we're doing okay?

Yeah, it's fine. We can't get in trouble for it. It's written here, you know. As

long as we have this in place, as long as we have this in place, as long as we

have this in place, we'd be fine.

Now American Pain is seeing as many as 500 patients a day.

They are dispensing thousands of pills each week.

And the number of people dying is growing day by day.

As the overdose death started becoming more prevalent and as the momentum grew

and grew, we knew that we had to do something. And it was time to take

everything that we had at the time and say, we're done. We're bringing Chris

George's world to an end.

Next on American Greed, big boys do cry when they're busted.

And here he is now. He's crying on the phone.

Scared to death. Doesn't know what to do.

By the morning of March 3, 2010, Chris and Jeff George have in just two years

sold 20 million pills and brought in $40 million.

And today, all that stops.

We wanted more than anything for Chris George to feel the weight of the federal

government come down on him in a matter of minutes.

Early in the morning.

More than 200 local and federal law enforcement officers simultaneously

on the George brothers' clinics and on the homes of everyone who works there.

When agents arrive at Chris George's house, they are surprised.

Chris and Diana have already left for the day.

He called me, and he said the police were at the house.

They had dogs in the house and all that other stuff. I'm just like, okay.

The FBI is listening in on the call.

Chris tells Diana.

Just a scared little boy.

Scared little boy.

And, you know, it was heart -wrenching to see him like that because I'm so used

to seeing that, you know, savvy business, tough guy, man that, you know,

world. And here he is now. He's crying on the phone.

Scared to death. Doesn't know what to do.

The FBI finds a few guns and some cash.

But the search of his mother's house turns up the biggest file.

Four small safes with $4 .5 million in cash.

Given the fact that we recovered so many millions of dollars from the attic of

Chris George's mother's home on the day of the search warrant told me that Chris

George knew that one day it was going to be over.

Somehow, though, in his mind, I think he thought that he wasn't going to be

going to jail and that there would be millions of dollars left over for him to

be able to play with when it was all over.

Later, when Chris is brought in for questioning, his response surprises no

He says, you guys got nothing on me. You guys got nothing on me. Our response

was, Chris, you hired these doctors.

You took these doctors' DEA numbers and you ordered pills under them.

Even though you're not the owner, you're the nominee owner, you still ran the

show. The phone calls prove you ran the show.

There's two ways about it.

And that is what they get him on, conspiring to operate a criminal

In 2011, Chris, Jeff, and Diana, along with clinic doctors and most of their

employees, are indicted.

Charges include racketeering, drug trafficking, money laundering, and wire

fraud. Jeff George goes first.

Treating guilty not only to the racketeering charge, but also to second

murder for his role in the death of Joey Bartolucci. He is sentenced to 20

years. He said that he was sorry. I think that he's sorry that he got

I think that he's sorry that his life is in shambles, that he's going to prison.

Later, Diana George pleads guilty to wire fraud.

She is sentenced to two and a half years and is released in October 2013.

She and Chris are now divorced.

You know, I mean, it did suck being away and going to prison. It really, really

sucked every day. But those were the choices I made that put me there. I

to turn a blind eye and not really think about what I was actually doing or

who I was hurting or who we all were hurting.

Went with it.

In October 2011, Chris finally pleaded guilty to racketeering and to sentence

14 years.

And no one is more surprised than his father.

It's shocking to me. I'm living through this. I never would have expected two

kids that went to Wellington Christian School to wind up in federal prison as

prisoners. Maybe they would have.

Some problems with traffic tickets and stuff like that, you know, those sort of

things. Not 15, 20 years in prison.

Out of 14 doctors who are indicted, 10 plead guilty.

Those who go to trial are convicted on drug and money laundering charges, but

are cleared of counts related to the deaths of their patients.

One of the problems we had with prosecuting this case is that most

rightfully so, hold doctors on a pedestal.

And they don't hold drug addicts in very high regard at all.

So to convince your average American that a doctor is not really a savior

in a white coat, he or she is no different than a street drug dealer, and

it's their fault that these addicts are in this condition, or it's their fault

that this addict died, is very difficult to do.

Very difficult to do.

Almost two years after the shutdown of the clinics, the state of Florida

implements a drug monitoring program and tightens regulations around the sale of

oxycodone. And the overdose death rates begin to decline.

One person who survives his addiction is Steve Mazza.

After the birth of his daughter, Mazza decides he needs to get off the pills.

One day, he realizes he has a choice.

I could just get on this bus and go right down to South County and ring the

doorbell and tell them, look, I'm going to kill myself if you don't help me.

So that's what I did.

With a lot of intensive treatment at the hospital and support from the Lord's

Place, a social service organization in Lake Worth, Mazza now has a full -time

job as head of catering for the agency.

And I never thought I would have a decent...

paying job, paying taxes again, and have my daughter on my own.

Up north in eastern Kentucky, the legacy of the Florida pain clinics continue to

be felt.

Now there's a new drug of choice, heroin.

We never had a heroin problem in this region prior to the prescription pill

epidemic. Heroin just wasn't a drug that the Appalachian region was suffering

from for whatever reason.

But once the opioids were introduced to this population through the diversion of

the prescription medication, and now that source is becoming very much

for them to get, we're seeing the influx of heroin, which is much more

devastating.

As people look back on the short but catastrophic episode of Chris and Jeff

George, everyone agrees that there was just one thing behind it all.

I think what we saw was that greed just overcame everyone.

It overcame their sense of morality, their sense of right and wrong, their

of how we treat a fellow human being. And the fact of the matter is, is that

they were getting a lot of money, and yet they were operating day to day.

came in. Nobody shut them down. So the greed brought forth this

amazing sense of immorality.

It made them feel as though they could do no wrong.