Original subtitles

Man, damn, I don't... I don't believe this.

I'm losing it.

I'm losing it big time, okay?

Maybe I dreamed this up, you know? Uh, you know, so...

I'm... I'm not trusting myself at this point in time.

It's Thursday. This is important because, uh...

I'm gonna blow up,

because my mind went into paranoia.

I really do believe I crossed the edge.

When I start discussing that I have a purpose,

I do rise up to a certain level.

It's when I go beyond that level that I start not functioning totally perfectly.

So help me, God, to think at a good level.

But not go into the paranoia level because I'm losing it.

How couldn't everybody see what was going on?

That's what we couldn't understand.

I mean, you know, some people had labeled Danny as crazy,

but he went to the FBI,

the DEA, you know, local law enforcement, all this,

and nothing was happening, so who's crazy here?

I was constantly thinking the DEA and FBI was either incompetent

or in cahoots with this doctor.

One of the reasons the investigation took so long

was because we had to go from pharmacy to pharmacy

to find the prescriptions written by Dr. Cleggett.

There was no prescription monitoring program.

So you'd have to hunt and peck all around the city and the suburbs

to find where all of these patients

were going to fill these prescriptions.

You can spend an entire day, uh, or two,

at a pharmacy, picking prescriptions that Dr. Cleggett wrote.

We found that Dr. Cleggett prescribed

180,000 OxyContin pills

within one year.

And that was only ten pharmacies.

We suddenly realized

that it's very likely she was writing millions of pills.

We were experiencing an overdose rate that was just out of control.

During that time, I saw young people

dead from overdose.

Really troubling to me.

I have a son myself.

And I would not wish that on anybody.

When it spiked, it spiked.

It wasn't like it was a gradual sort of thing.

It just seemed like it just started happening

right away.

Dr. Cleggett was making St. Bernard Parish

ground zero for overdoses.

Just last week, a man walked into the pharmacy and demanded OxyContin.

He even said he had a gun.

Detectives were able to arrest him as he came out the front doors.

Drugstores were being robbed.

Crazy things were happening.

They were even walking in, in daylight, and doing these types of things.

I see the different crimes going on

and I know it's because of addiction.

These are not bad people.

These are people that are in the most desperate state.

It's like starving to death. You're going to do...

whatever you have to do to feed yourself, because you have to survive.

I felt like this mayhem that was going on...

all was tied to Dr. Cleggett.

And I tried to justify my actions

with curtailing OxyContin at the drugstore,

because I thought, if some of those people

didn't come around our store, okay...

that we might be less likely to get robbed.

But my boss at my drugstore, Mr. Claude, thought that I was overreacting

and making judgments.

Mr. Claude is concerned about me.

He knows that I've been talking about this doctor and this drug.

This is maybe what gets me in trouble.

I believe he's filling a lot of OxyContin prescriptions

for people that he shouldn't be filling them for.

Danny and Mr. Claude got into, like, a tension over the prescriptions

'cause OxyContin does make the pharmacy a lot of money.

He couldn't see filling all these prescriptions every day

and not...

not do anything about it.

Mr. Claude would tell me,

you know, "Don't feel complicit. It's a legal prescription

from a doctor."

It was always about the doctors.

They knew best.

You start running into prescriptions

that are very questionable,

but it's not up to you

to make the decision that this is the wrong thing to do.

I didn't see it that way.

As a pharmacist, I felt like it was my mission

to make a difference.

Pharmacists are in a position to know

which physicians are prescribing appropriately

and which physicians are prescribing inappropriately.

Dr. Cleggett surely must have stood out as one

who was not prescribing appropriately.

I was appointed Director of Health in 1983.

We were involved at that time in some drug abuse programs,

because the abuse of prescription opioids became a problem.

There was a tremendous amount of attention given to pain in the late 1990s.

Most doctors in this country...

don't treat pain.

If you're in pain, a lot of 'em accuse you of being a drug addict

or... or there to get high.

They started treating me

as if I was really just coming to them because I wanted pain medication,

I was a drug addict, and that's how they started treating me.

Don't accept it if they say,

"You have to learn to live with the pain." Don't take that.

Find another doctor.

These drug companies came in

and were much less interested in people establishing diagnoses.

Just doling out the prescriptions for their pain medications.

There's no need

for anyone to suffer,

because there are medications that work effectively on pain.

I started thinking this was bigger than just this doctor in New Orleans East.

How in the hell did doctors around the country

think this was a wonder drug and not addictive?

What, what I saw... It looked like over-the-counter heroin.

Sadly, we've known for years in medicine

that we in medicine are doing a very poor job of treating pain.

There's no question that our best, strongest pain medicines are the opioids.

But these are the same drugs that have a reputation

for causing addiction and other terrible things.

Prior to 1980,

doctors were very reluctant to prescribe opioids

because they were afraid their patients would get addicted, and for good reason.

This country had seen at least two prior opioid epidemics.

One that dated back to the Civil War...

when heroin was sold next to Bayer Aspirin as a pain reliever for infants.

Then we saw another opioid epidemic when our soldiers

were coming back from the Vietnam War.

Many of them had gotten addicted to opium

while they were in Vietnam.

Then, in the 1990s,

prescribing more opioids became acquainted with being compassionate.

If you were really a compassionate doctor,

you would prescribe opioids.

These drugs which, I repeat,

are our best, strongest pain medications,

should be used much more than they are

for patients in pain.

Purdue Pharma and other opioid manufacturers

very heavily advocated to doctors

that opioid prescribing was safe

as long as they were treating patients with pain.

That somehow, the prescription pad conferred this sort of magic halo effect

and patients couldn't get addicted.

The rate of addiction amongst pain patients

who are treated by doctors

is much less than 1%.

They said patients who are demonstrating all of the signs and symptoms

of having become addicted to the opioid that the doctor is prescribing

are not in fact addicted.

They're pseudo-addicted.

Pseudo-addiction is...

when a patient is looking like a drug addict,

because they're pursuing pain relief.

If your patient looked like they were getting addicted,

they weren't really addicted. They were in pain.

You needed to give them more opioids.

Addiction is an uncontrolled, compulsive use of a drug,

despite the fact that it's doing you harm.

Now that's different from physical dependence.

Physical dependence sounds bad, but all it means

is that, if you stop using the drug, then...

you'll get a withdrawal symptom.

But it's clearly got nothing to do with addiction,

because it doesn't have a psychological component.

That's what doctors across the country

were taught in the 1990s and early aughts.

From best practices of sales...

Purdue Pharma actually trained their sales reps

to actually go out and spread that message

that we can alleviate these minor aches and pains that people have

without any fear of addiction.

And that this drug was virtually non-addictive.

I didn't know shit about shit with...

pain medication.

I had no idea what the marketplace looked like.

I just knew that people were making money

and I wanted to make money.

Who doesn't? Right?

I started working with Purdue Pharma

in 1998.

After I was hired,

we had an extensive training period at Purdue's corporate headquarters

in Stamford, Connecticut.

Man, it was a lot of rah-rah.

The way it was pitched to us is that

the physicians, the medical fraternity,

they need to know about what this medication

can do for their patients.

You gotta remember, OxyContin, at this time, did not have a bad name.

Right?

And so you could go in and you start talking to a physician

that can see the benefits as I was giving it to him.

We told them it's pain relief that will last

12 full hours.

And... And the FDA has approved this language in our package insert,

which says it has lower addictive properties.

The package insert is the little piece of paper

that's folded up and you get it with every prescription in the pharmacy.

So when somebody would talk to me about, "Well, it's more addictive..."

"N-No."

"I mean, Doc, you know what it takes to get stuff in this package insert."

You have to submit everything to the FDA.

The FDA has gotta pore through it.

The FDA is gonna finally kiss it and put their blessing on it

and now I have it.

They say, "Not true."

Why wouldn't you use it?

There were so many people in pain

that could benefit from this medicine.

Coming out of training, I'm on fire for all this.

Certainly, these doctors will see the benefit of what I'm selling.

I can remember,

oftentime, I'd go out that door to go to lunch

and I can remember the guy from Purdue standing right there,

saying, "Oh, Dr. Lutz, Dr. Lutz, you've got to see this.

This is the pain pill your patients need.

They don't have to wake up during the night with pain.

They take it, it lasts for 12 hours.

OxyContin, long-acting."

Almost like car salesmen.

They sent representatives to go out to the doctors and even pharmacists.

We started having salesmen for Purdue Pharma come into our store.

And they were promoting the drug.

Part of our job responsibility was to go in and call on pharmacists.

Just talking to them about the medication, just in case they get some questions

and they knew how to consult patients that might have questions about it.

You know, give 'em some ink pens and notepads

and all of that good, happy, crappy shit.

My district ranged all across south Louisiana.

We would go from Lake Charles to New Orleans.

The way that we would figure out who we were gonna target in our territory,

who are we gonna try to convert...

um, from short-acting opioids to long-acting,

because those are the...

That's the low-hanging fruit.

We would get the data in.

We would know who was writing.

And we would get their name and address.

It was always told to us that this was the most...

uh, comprehensive data...

that any company in the industry would...

could provide to their sales representatives.

I was doing good.

My numbers are growing. I think they look great.

But we would be told every single day,

"There's a next tier of rep."

Like, "Do you want to go next level?"

Because the territory rep in New Orleans East

was making me look like...

I'm just a regular Old Joe.

You don't imagine New Orleans East as a destination for health.

But apparently it was...

for some people.

Because this rep was killing it.

We were told he was making close to $800,000 a year.

As a territory rep, that's...

It was unheard of.

His territory was gaining more prescriptions

than any other territory

in the entire United States of America.

As I would go through the data,

'cause it was delivered weekly to us...

I saw there was one physician in New Orleans East

generating this extremely high level of prescriptions.

And, of course, my natural, you know, inclination

is to say, "Let's go see this doctor."

And we can't.

Because the sun is still in the sky.

And so you have to hang around a lot longer...

after the sun went down.

Okay, that's different hours for a doctor.

Let's take a look and see what the fuck is going on out there.

You know how somebody smells when they've been smoking cigarettes

for three days

and they haven't slept or showered?

You know that smell?

If you pull up in a parking lot

and it smells like that...

it really starts to make you think,

"Man, something is not right in this equation."

What I learned is it might be one doctor

doing 95% of the prescriptions.

I don't have to be a good salesman to have a good territory.

I gotta have the right doctors.

I certainly didn't want to be connected

to any illicit activities that could be going on.

Right?

I wanted to be free and clear of that.

Then, you know,

you'd get a $35,000-$40,000 bonus check in a quarter.

Right?

And you say, "Man..."

You know...

"Maybe I'll keep doing this for a little while.

Maybe it'll get better."

In our drugstore, we would read the death notices.

We had a list.

We called it the "death list."

People that we anticipated were gonna die.

And, believe it or not,

we started checking off names.

Everywhere you looked, people would experience

how this was affecting us.

I talked to an EMT that told me, "It's a nightmare,"

and he said...

"Our hospital emergency room,

we can't get heart patients in, we can't get old people in right now.

We're full of overdoses."

I can remember one incident on the news

where a father lost his 17-year-old son

by injecting him with OxyContin.

Paul Breaux allegedly injected his son

with two doses of OxyContin.

His son was found dead hours later.

He got those pills the same way most people do.

With a doctor's prescription.

Those prescription drugs were prescribed to him by a Dr. Cleggett.

Jacqueline Cleggett, out of, uh, New Orleans East.

I had many friends that overdosed.

They would find them, you know, at home in bed.

And they didn't want to die. They just used.

They'll just start making what's called the death rattle.

When an opioid user

takes too much,

they begin trying to breathe and they make this noise

and their eyes roll in the back of their head.

And I remember one of my girlfriends doing that.

We were slapping her face and throwing water on her to wake her up.

I've seen that happen a few times.

Very scary.

On separate occasions,

two women have fatally overdosed on OxyContin

in the home of James Price.

Despite living in Mississippi,

Price is a patient of Dr. Cleggett.

It's an interesting situation,

what some people think is insanity.

In Mr. Claude's mind, I'm going overboard.

In my mind, I see...

kids dying right and left.

Now, in his mind, he thinks I see these kids dying

because my son died.

Yes, it has something to do with my son dying,

but these kids are dying.

There was a rumor that there was a pharmacist

who had lost his son tragically.

And he was making a lot of noise about Dr. Cleggett.

And...

that's not good for business.

It's not good for business in my territory.

It's not good for business anywhere.

The crime that was being committed

was actually in Dan's profession,

so the things that maybe he had just done

through muscle training before,

and that's filling those scripts and not paying a lot of attention to,

he could no longer ignore.

He understood.

Particularly when he would hear that someone he filled a script for

died of an overdose.

He knew that he was in that chain.

He was filling those scripts.

As a pharmacist, much less an employee,

I have a responsibility for the well-being of my patients.

And nobody is inspired enough to take on Dr. Jacqueline Cleggett.

So, I have to take a temporary leave of absence,

because I definitely feel

that I'm actually doing the things that a person should do...

to correct evils and problems.

It is a calling.

Chalmette pharmacist Daniel Schneider

says he's taking a leave of absence from his drugstore job

to crusade against the illegal use of OxyContin.

We have to educate them that these things are way more dangerous

than they think they are.

OxyContin scares you that much?

It scares me every bit that much.

In fact, it scares me worse than what my son died of.

I was pretty much working full time at shutting Dr. Cleggett down.

Whatever it took.

It's an interesting situation

because the DEA wants me to stay away from Cleggett completely

and quit asking questions and quit talking to people.

They even almost threatened me not to go around her.

But I told them, "Well, sometimes, I just happen to pass that way."

I'm on the way home

and it's even almost not out of the way to just pass by Cleggett's office.

Which I fully well intend to do no matter what they've said.

Because a lot of innocent people are getting hurt.

And so, I think, in the overall scheme of things,

it's the right thing to do.

Her operation was so incredible.

Why couldn't they shut her down? I didn't get it.

You would think,

"What a toothless agency, that you don't have mechanisms in place

to be able to restrict this type of illegal prescribing."

We do have mechanisms in place.

DEA builds a case, presents its evidence to the United States Attorney

and they'll decide to bring a prosecution.

The Dr. Cleggett case had been presented.

So I spoke with the United States Attorney.

I met great resistance and I couldn't understand it.

I asked them continually, "Why couldn't we go after this?"

And they... they said, "Well,

doctors are a profession in American society

that's held in very high esteem."

They would all revert to, "The doctors are trained medical professionals.

They know what they're supposed to distribute. You don't."

They weren't accustomed to prosecuting doctors.

Doctors were holy.

We had to prove that the physicians

had morphed from being caring physicians

to nothing but dope dealers with white lab coats.

It wasn't like you were dealing with a crack dealer

or somebody selling pills on the street.

But in reality,

every day you don't take somebody like this off the street,

you have the potential for more people to die.

The US Attorney kept sending DEA back and back and back

to get more and more information.

There had to be a lot of really egregious things

that you could prove or show to make a prosecutable case,

you know, because this was new.

In my opinion...

the US Attorney's office was not moving fast enough.

They don't see people.

They don't see families destroyed by the opioid crisis.

They only read numbers, stats.

We were on the frontline.

We saw what the effects of the opioid crisis are.

And then 2001 was really the year

the media finally started talking about

the fact that people were dying from OxyContin.

Then, like a ton of bricks,

Time magazine released this article reporting that St. Bernard

was one of the hotspots in the country for OxyContin abuse, in the entire nation.

St. Bernard Parish, a community

of 75,000 people,

led the per capita overdose rate

in Louisiana and in the southeast region

and probably in a great portion

of the United States at the time.

There was national coverage,

including Newsweek and Time magazine.

It was written in the Times-Picayune.

There were television exposés on it.

There is a prescription painkiller in the news today

for all the wrong reasons.

OxyContin.

No new prescription drug in the last 20 years

has been as widely abused as quickly as OxyContin.

It is now the most heavily prescribed narcotic

in the country.

Sales topped a billion dollars.

Six million prescriptions for the legitimately suffering

and, for thousands of others, an addictive nightmare.

Around that time...

I remember calling on a doctor...

and I hand him one of the sales aids or whatever

and, right in front of me, he just dumped it in the trash.

"Bye.

That's what I think of this."

When the reports continued to come out...

Purdue executives testified before Congress

about the OxyContin abuse problem.

My name is Paul Goldenheim.

I'm the senior physician at Purdue Pharma.

And, as you noted,

its executive vice-president for research and development.

OxyContin is widely recognized as a highly-effective treatment

for pain.

When properly used under the supervision of a physician,

it is also an extremely safe medication.

Addiction is rare in the pain patient

who is properly managed.

We were told

physicians that understood what this medication was,

and the benefits of it,

would give it to appropriate patients.

The appropriate patient is not the market.

We've tried to teach doctors how to use these medicines appropriately.

We have never encouraged misuse or diversion.

There's some notion

that because it's a pill manufactured by a pharmaceutical company,

it's completely safe, even if you crush it and inject it

and wash it down with a six-pack and snort some cocaine.

Where the growth...

Where the amazing growth

and all the dollars that went to the company

and went to the territory reps...

It came from...

physicians that were not doing the right thing.

Plain and simple.

We've never done anything that could remotely be suggested

that it was a good idea for a criminal physician

to sell a prescription.

The pharmaceutical opioid industry...

didn't overtly encourage pill mill doctors,

but they certainly didn't do anything about them.

We had to make sure that we were always calling on, uh...

targets of opportunity, right?

Management would have access to the data.

They would see the physicians that were high targets.

"Man, we really need to convert this person.

Let's go see them."

We would call those people "whales,"

"monsters,"

"huge."

And it was almost

a bit of a bragging, uh, point.

It was pitched to me that

Purdue spends more money...

compiling this data to give to representatives

than any other company in the business.

In 2001, finally people started speaking out

and yet nothing seemed to happen that reduced the problem.

Dr. Cleggett was still out there.

I thought that the US Attorney was moving too slow.

So I personally went to her house

and asked Dr. Cleggett

to surrender her controlled-substance license voluntarily.

Dr. Cleggett's house was in disarray.

Of course, she was sleeping, because it was early morning.

Although we did wake her up,

she still seemed, um, disoriented.

We suspected that she was using prescription pills herself.

I never witnessed her abusing the pills myself.

But there was talk in the waiting room

that maybe Dr. Cleggett had gotten

caught up in the same system

that her patients were caught up in.

But, you know, it's hearsay.

Sometimes you can go to a doctor and say, "Doc,

I think you're using drugs yourself

and I think it's in your best interest

to surrender your license right now.

You have the right to apply to have it returned.

once you seek treatment and help for yourself."

Some of the doctors will say, "You know what?

I am having problems," and will surrender their license.

And that happens more than you'd think.

I knew that it would not be easy for her to give up her license.

And I also know that it's not an easy road to become a doctor.

So I talked to her...

woman to woman, profession to profession,

explained to her the violations that she faced.

She understood. She...

understood.

However, upon going towards her living room

to get an ink pen and sign the DEA form,

I mentioned her kids.

You know...

...she went down the, uh, row

and explained one was going to college,

one was 13 and the other one was ten.

And, uh...

then told me, no, she couldn't.

She had to pay for college.

She said, "I'm not signing that.

I'm not gonna do that."

And she told them to get out, she was never surrendering her license.

They didn't have anything on her and just leave her alone, you know.

And she refused to surrender her DEA number.

Nothing seemed to happen to reduce the problem.

I'm at the wits' end right now.

I really didn't know what to do.

This is the American statue.

- That's enough. - 1987.

So, Danny boy, I love you. I'm in your room.

I'm looking at the Beatles.

And, God, please help me and Annie...

Annie to have more faith in me and help her support me.

Will he make it to the other side?

Oh, Lord!

Almost!

But, God, most of all, please,

I need help in the direction that I take.

We need a break.

And then I happened to be watching 20/20.

Tonight, secret police tapes of young,

healthy people lining up

at the doctor's office.

It was a segment

about a doctor in Portsmouth, Ohio.

He had been arrested and charged with running a pill mill.

Authorities say

Dr. Lilly wrote more than 4,000 bogus prescriptions,

mostly for pain medications.

I couldn't believe how similar he was to Cleggett

and he had been taken down by one of the local prosecutors there.

I think it's an old story. I think, uh, it's greed, pure and simple.

You could tell he was not examining patients

in such an examination room.

I wanted to find out what they had done,

so I called the prosecutor on the case.

Hello?

- Yeah, Mr., uh, Brown? - Just call me Rick.

- Okay, Rick, how are you? - Fine.

Yeah, Rick, I'm calling about that case

- that reached national prominence. - Yes.

We have a situation down here. I'm a pharmacist.

I'm not in law enforcement, although I'm...

I've been trying to help out law enforcement as much as I can.

- Okay. - And we have a doctor that, uh...

- seems to make your doctor look good. - What are the doctor's credentials?

You're not gonna believe this. She was trained as a pediatrician.

Well, well, well.

Let me tell you what else she does. If you come in and pay an extra $100,

you get stat service.

Okay, well, this guy... Okay, there must be a...

They must have this in a playbook,

because this doctor had two lines.

One for refills, one for new patients.

Wow.

This prosecutor,

he had seen them do some of the same things she did.

But he had never seen any of them

that had a police department actually on their doorstep.

Holy cow. You've got a major problem.

The FBI and the DEA have been involved also

and they just seem to be either dragging their feet,

they don't give a damn or...

I don't understand what their problem is.

I really don't.

Well, it's bureaucratic crap as near as I can make out.

- We have that problem tremendously. - We have...

You even have... You even have that problem?

Oh, crap, we have a local federal task force.

So they tell you they're doing something and they're not?

They are not telling us what they're doing.

If you can't cooperate with us, we've got a job to do.

Exactly.

Which is the question I have to ask y'all.

What was the smoking gun?

What's the key to getting a doctor like this?

The key is you need the cooperation of your medical board,

who can go in at any time and ask to see the doctor's records.

Well, good. Look, I appreciate it.

I may be back in touch with you,

but I do appreciate the information you've given me.

- And, uh, wish us luck. - Any time.

He says, "I recommend that you go to the medical board

and try to process it through the board."

So,

in April 2001,

I wrote a letter outlining Dr. Cleggett's procedures and my concerns.

For approximately 19 years,

I served as complaint counsel

to the Louisiana Board of Medical Examiners.

One of the primary functions of the medical board

is to make sure the physicians that they license

are practicing appropriately.

And that means

that if a complaint is filed with the board,

then it is the board's authority

to investigate that complaint for medical malpractice.

So that put me in the role of, uh, a prosecutor.

And my job is to round up the evidence.

We at DEA have to do a lot more than a medical board does

in order to shut down a doctor.

The medical board can do something administratively.

With DEA,

we have to prove without a doubt

that something has occurred criminally.

All of a sudden...

this big box of these records shows up.

I call it my "Cleggett file."

If the state board of medical examiners

is suspending somebody's license,

they need someone to review the records and give an opinion.

Every profession has a few bad apples.

The problem in medicine is that one bad apple

can write hundreds and hundreds of prescriptions.

I knew that, in order to proceed

with a summary suspension,

I would need lead pipe material.

I felt that a licensed pharmacist would have instant credibility

with the board.

It's around Christmas time, I believe,

and George Papale calls me and says,

"Do you want to get involved in this?"

I said, "Amen, I sure do."

He was very grateful, uh...

and invited me to come to his house...

for a more in-depth discussion

about what had gone on.

My goodness, there were boxes

and boxes of materials and videos, and he...

He couldn't move fast enough.

He was trying to talk and show me things.

He said, "Look, you've got a wealth of information,

but, you know...

you really kinda need a smoking gun."

And I realized I'm out of the loop.

The only way that I can get back in the loop,

I had to go to work back at Bradley's.

Mr. Claude, you know, I pray that you want me back.

Uh... And hopefully we can work it out,

come to some resolution as to how to proceed

and what maybe I should do and what I shouldn't do.

So we'll discuss this and we'll see how everything goes.

God bless.

I talked to Mr. Claude at my drugstore.

And we have a heart-to-heart talk.

He says, "Danny, I'm not gonna force you to fill Dr. Cleggett's prescriptions.

But you can't be questioning all the patients...

about Dr. Cleggett."

So, with some agreements not to hassle the patients,

I go back to work at Bradley's Pharmacy.

I've gotta be careful at the store as to what I say.

However, that doesn't mean I have to be completely quiet.

I do believe that, in some sort of way,

some proof will come to me to stop Dr. Cleggett.

Part of my agreement was that I leave my tape recorder at home.

But I didn't really do that.

- Rebecca? - Uh-huh.

How are you doing? You're a little too soon.

I don't know. They're supposed to last 22 days

and it's, like, been 15.

- When did you see Cleggett? - Yesterday.

Doctor probably shouldn't have gave you these this soon.

Yeah, well, I had a real, real bad surgery.

- Did you? - Yeah.

Even still, what you have to do now...

If you have to take 'em more often...

you've got to get her to write that.

I'm pretty much biding my time,

you know, tolerating some of this stuff, okay?

And all of a sudden...

a girl, who appears to be about 16 years of age...

she comes skipping in the store. She's actually skipping.

And the mother presents...

a stack of prescriptions.

She says, "My daughter's got sickle cell and she's really in great pain."

I look at the prescriptions...

and it's OxyContin, 80 mg.

Eighty milligrams!

This kid weighs 100 pounds!

Soma, 100.

Valium, 100.

And roxicodone, which is a short-acting opiate.

These prescriptions surely could have killed this girl.

I delay the lady a little bit.

I make copies of the prescription and I go out and talk to her.

She's trying to talk me into filling the prescriptions.

I'm not gonna fill these prescriptions.

And I give them back, because they don't want to wait.

It's kind of crazy.

But, unfortunately, I didn't bring my recorder that day.

So I've got to do this right. I've got to be smart.

I've gotta make sure that Dr. Cleggett admits

she wrote these prescriptions.

Because sure as I try to nail her on it, she's going to say they're forgeries.

So, I called Dr. Cleggett.

My adrenaline was really pumping.

This was the chance at the smoking gun that we needed to shut her down.

I gave the child's name.

And I said, "Did you write these prescriptions?"

"I certainly did."

I said, "Well, Dr. Cleggett, this is a definite overdose."

She says,

"Who the fuck made you a doctor?"

Then she hung up.

Smoking gun.

I called George Papale.

I said, "George...

let me tell you about this situation."

Dan Schneider talked to the young lady's physician

who had treated her for her illness in the hospital...

and had discharged her on Tylenol.

As opposed to this huge amount of OxyContin

and other medications prescribed by Dr. Cleggett.

As soon as the medical board received this affidavit...

they did verify my concerns with a Dr. Brobson Lutz.

Eighty milligram OxyContin

for her initial visit.

"To take one or two every 12 hours."

That's a tremendous dose.

You would never start anybody out on a dose like that.

There is no way that Dr. Cleggett

could have really thought that she was practicing good medicine.

When he put that in an affidavit,

if there ever was a smoking gun, that was it.

He says, "Dan...

I think this just might do it."

The medical board sent SUVs there...

with the St. Bernard Parish police...

the DEA...

Dan Schneider was the linchpin.

As crazy and as out of control as this guy was,

he got results.

The desk was piled high

with tens and twenty-dollar bills in big stacks.

There were stacks and stacks of prescriptions

that had already been signed by Dr. Cleggett

and were only awaiting somebody to put the date

and the patient's name on the prescription.

When they served Dr. Cleggett

with the summary suspension order, she was not happy about it.

She was mad as a hornet.

She said, "DEA, NOPD, task force, whoever you are,

you're dead."

She literally threatened federal agents.

That was pretty unusual, yes.

Pretty unusual.

It was very clear to us that she was not gonna let this go

without a major defense and attack.

- Here's your water. - Uh-huh.

When you need it. I'm gonna put...

Let me just take one little, quick glance at that.

And then tissues are going be right here, too, okay?

Okay.