Original subtitles

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 fuck around?

You're going to fucking 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 fucked?

You just need to relax, Chris

and you need to think of a fucking plan.

But you need to think of something

and killing yourself is not the answer.

You cannot leave me here by my fucking 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 drugs.

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 guns 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 drugs.

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, "Goddamn, 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 shit.

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 fuck 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 shit, 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...

Crack 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, shithole 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' drugs."

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 shooting 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...

shoot 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, shots of Patrón.

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 drugs, 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 drugs 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 explosion 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 drugs, 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 drugs 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 drugs 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 shit about that.

Literally, sack of money each.

There wasn't a fucking CPA on staff, and of course...

Derik.

He was enjoying those cash plays. It's fucking 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 crack. 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 fucking 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 shit.

If this guy... this guy can do it, I got this shit."

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 shooting, fuckin' free shot.

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

shot 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, shooting 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 drugs.

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 drugs, 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 drugs. 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 gun to the clinic.

We asked him, "Why do you carry a gun?"

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, shit."

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 fuck's going on, buddy

but that's me.

Why are you pretending to be me? What the fuck 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 gun 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 gun on him. Of course, I did.

They come in, shake my business down like they're the mob.

They're not getting shit 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 drugs

and they got hit by a train

while trying to cross the train track in their car.

They tried to fucking weave through a railroad crossing

and got hit by a fucking 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 drugs, ever.

He got addicted to Roxies. And he overdosed and died.

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 died.

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 drugs.

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 fuck do you think I am here for?

For my fucking own health?

I don't understand what you're talking about.

Stop thinking that you are fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fucking job.

Do you have one?

- I'm retired. - Do you have one?

You're retired?

- You're a fucking loser. - I'm retired.

And you have nothing and you're going to prison.

Fuck 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 Nazi 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 gun

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 ammunition in a different caliber than the guns.

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 murder 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 kill 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 fucking asshole.

And fuck 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, shitting, 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 killing me slowly.

And they were killing a lot of people.

I mean, I've seen a lot of people die from them.

People that were friends of mine that died from the drugs 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 "died" died of overdose.

And the rest died 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, shooting 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 shit 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 murder 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 drugs, 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.

Translator: IYUNO