And That's Why We Drink - BONUS: In Conversation with Hannah Smith of The Opportunist

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

Surprise! We have a fun bonus mini crossover episode for you today! We chatted with Hannah Smith of The Opportunist podcast, one of our favorites for mystery and intrigue. Tune in as Hannah shares with us a very strong candidate for our infamous phrase "pillar to killer" aka Robert Courtney, a pharmacist who scammed millions by diluting chemotherapy medications. He's also the focus of The Opportunist, season two! Our conclusion: stay a pillar and stop murdering people with cancer... and that's why we drink! Check out the new season of The Opportunist for the full, in-depth story of Robert Courtney. And be sure to check out the second part of this crossover HERE on The Opportunist feed, where we share our own take on stories of opportunists with Hannah!

Hello everybody and welcome to and that's why we drink a paranormal and true crime podcast but today we have a very special episode for you we actually have a special guest we have Hannah Smith who is the host of the opportunist which is a great podcast that tells true stories of regular people who turn sinister by embracing opportunity. I know. Season one followed the story of Sherry Schreiner, an internet cult leader who ran her cult entirely on Facebook, in many ways a precursor to QAnon. You know if you've listened to all three of the lengthy episodes I put out on QAnon that I'm a big fan. So season two follows Robert Courtney, a Kansas City pharmacist who carried out a decades-long fraud that became the FBI's top priority in 2001 prior to 9-11. And today, Hannah is going to be telling us the story of Robert Courtney for the very first time.

We are so excited. Welcome, Hannah, to our interesting crossover extravaganza. And also thank you for being willing to be a part of a crossover with us. It's absolutely very, very wonderful. So thank you for being here and also letting us on your show. Oh, yes, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me and for coming on my show. I'm really excited for this crossover. And we'll see. Yeah, ready to get into it. Awesome. Yeah. So we're going to be also just so everybody knows,

we're going to be guesting on a bonus episode of the opportunist also out today where the three of us, we all picked different stories and, or at least Christina and I picked different stories. Did you pick a story to Hannah? I did. Yeah. Okay, perfect.

So we're all going to be telling each other our stories and I can tell you that I have a very juicy one. I'm very excited to share. So hop on over there and go check it out. Go check out the opportunist. So tell us about Robert Courtney. What is this about? All right. First of all, I'm also a huge fan of your show. So thank you so much. And I feel a little nervous telling you the story because I hear you telling each other stories so often but I'll do my best. And like stumbling over ourselves and falling down the stairs. The secret is to not be perfect at all like to just just get kind of guess your way around and we'll we'll fill in the blanks with weird with weird rambling so. Okay great I can

do that not be perfect I can definitely do that. Perfect. Okay, so Robert Courtney. So Robert Courtney was this Kansas City pharmacist. And, you know, he was very successful. He was very respected in his community as not just a pharmacist, but an entrepreneur and businessman. He owned two pharmacies in Kansas City. And one of them was in this medical center, the research medical center, and it had a hospital and his pharmacy as well as private oncology practices. He bought the pharmacy in 1986. Yeah. The reason people viewed him as an entrepreneur is that he did this sort of unusual thing with a pharmacy where he promoted himself to cancer doctors in Kansas City as this a pharmacist that would mix chemotherapy IVs for them and that yeah so chemotherapy drugs oftentimes

come in a powder form and then you based on the prescription you mix however much of the medicine into these medical saline IV bags right and yeah so they're tailor-made to the patient, but you have to have a sterile room to do it. So it's expensive to set up. Also, they're really toxic. So you have to be really careful with handling them. So they're kind of like, you know, hard to make. So he just was promoting himself to all the cancer doctors in Kansas City, like, I'll make all your chemotherapy IV bags for you. That actually does sound like quite an entrepreneurial venture there of like, I can do something very few can. It is a very dangerous task, and I'm willing to take the burden on. So I get it. So far, he sounds like an upstanding guy. Yeah, so far.

Upstanding guy. Also a deacon at his church. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, there you have it. You know, family man. As we like to say, and that's what I drink, a pillar of the community. A pillar of the community. Oh, he was a very strong pillar. Yeah, usually it doesn't end too well.

Pillar to killer, as we say. Pillar to killer. I love that. That's perfect. And as you know, things are definitely going to go awry. And as you know, things are definitely going to go awry. So, yeah, so he was doing this allotted in the community until 2001. There was an oncologist, Dr. Verda Hunter, who was in that same center, and she used Robert Courtney to mix all of her chemotherapy IVs. And one day at a sales luncheon, this guy named Daryl Ashley, who is a sales rep for a

specific chemotherapy drug, Gemsar, he would bring lunch in for the nurses and like ask about how the drugs were doing, pitch new, you know, try to sell, get them to buy new drugs from his company. And one of the nurses said, I bet you're getting a lot of commission from Gemsar because our office is using so much of it. And he was sort of surprised by that. And long story short, he went on this investigation to try to figure out how much Gemsar that Robert Courtney was buying. Robert Courtney was buying it from this wholesaler, so not directly from his company. And when he finally got the report from the pharmacist about how much you know gems are he was buying like nothing added up like the the numbers weren't right the price that was listed

wasn't right and he was just like something is going on and I like something weird is going on and then he started to think back about conversations he'd had with Dr. Hunter's nurses where they would mention things like sometimes we get the IV bags from Robert Courtney and they're like half full. Huh. Okay. Very fishy. There were things that were like they could have been red flags, but there was always like explanations like, yeah, they're tailor made.

So sometimes they're a little bit different in amounts. People weren't having toxicities from their chemotherapy treatment. Like a lot of patients weren't losing their hair or getting sick. But at the same time, all of these chemotherapy drugs were always advancing. And so like they were getting better and better. And like the side effects, you know, they were getting like less extreme. So it wasn't like a huge red flag. But when the sales rep like started like crunching the numbers and then thinking back about these conversations, he started putting it together that something was going wrong. And eventually, he realized that Dr. Verda Hunter was purchasing way more Gemsar from Robert Courtney, the pharmacist,

than Robert Courtney was buying from the wholesaler. So he started to suspect that Robert Courtney was diluting the chemotherapy meds. Dr. Verda Hunter stepped in. She got a sample of a chemotherapy IV bag from the pharmacist tested by a lab. And it came back as only having one third of the prescribed dose of medication. Oh, yeah. Oh, OK. And so she's yeah, big problem. So she tipped off the FBI. And then what followed was this enormous FBI investigation, the biggest the number one priority of the FBI in 2001 up until 9-11. Right. And they conducted two sting operations with Dr. Hunter. She worked with the FBI, ordered, you know, chemotherapy medications from Robert Courtney. Oh my gosh. I love a good sting operation. Right? Oh my gosh. Oh yeah. This is definitely like the FBI investigation of this

story is like really fun and impressive. Can I ask why there were two? Like, why didn't why wasn't the first one the successful sting operation? Do we know that or not to put you on the spot there if you don't know? Well, yeah, no. So they did one initially and that one came back. The test came back and all I think they tested six bags. All of them came back sub-potent.

The highest percentage was like 50% and they were varying levels of percentage. The lowest one was almost 0%, like a trace of the medication. Yeah, which means that if that was a real patient with cancer, they would have just been given like saline. That's right. Beyond. Beyond. Yeah. But then when they, they basically, the reason they did too, so they set a date to raid the pharmacy and they needed to get, they needed to connect Robert Courtney with the, with like the sub potent bags

because he had multiple pharmacists working. So they needed to know that he was the one that prepared it. So they did a second sting the day of the sting operation, or the day of the raid. And so what they did is FBI agents approached Robert Courtney and asked to interview him. They went out to their car, and they identified themselves as federal agents

and then said they were investigating a pharmacist. And Robert Courtney was like very, you know, agreeable. And he answered their questions. And they asked him the prescriptions that Dr. Verda Hunter ordered today, who prepared them? And he said, I did. And so when those medications came back the next day as all-subpotent, that was essentially a confession. Because he had admitted that he is the one that did that. And what's really bizarre to me about the raid is that he didn't suspect anything. FBI agents came to his pharmacy and started asking him questions. And he just didn't even suspect anything, which makes me think that he never

thought he was going to get caught. Yeah. Was he just that he never thought he was going to get caught yeah was he just that confident or that he was going to get away with it yeah he just thought yeah he just thought he would never get caught um i feel like we see that all the time too of like you're either really dumb or like so confident in yourself that we just recorded we just recorded two episodes yesterday where like both of the stories that christine covered they the people were just like wildly overconfident with the fact that like they just couldn't possibly get caught. To like a degree where they got themselves in trouble because they weren't covering themselves.

Like had you been a little more paranoid, maybe you would have actually gotten away with it and you would have been right. Yeah. It's shocking. So essentially they had a confession and they convinced him to come in and give a Mirandai's confession. The first thing he said to the FBI was he said, yes, I did do this.

But I've done it only for a year. And there's only 34. Yeah. I've only done it for a year. Don't worry about it. Only 365 days of prescriptions are wrecked because of me. Yeah. And he said only 34 patients, all Dr. Hunter's patients had been affected. And he said

the reason he did it was that he had pledged $1 million to his church and he couldn't pay it. That's an interesting explanation. And so he started, what he would do is he would get like one dose of a chemotherapy drug that came in the powder and he would split it among like four different bags ration it like trying to make it make it last oof but then he would charge the doctor's full price for each one and so uh one estimate said that he could make like three thousand dollars profit per prescription whoa and sorry this is because he promised he would make a million dollars for his church or something like why would you do that he promised he would make a million dollars for his church or something. Like, why would you do that if you didn't have a million dollars?

Well, yeah, I mean, that's what he initially said. But what's interesting about him is that he he was very in he was very into his appearance and he wanted to not just be successful, but appear successful. Right. Sure. Say no more. not just be successful, but appear successful, right? Sure. Say no more. Yeah. Like he was living in a house that was like $700,000 in Kansas City in the 90s. Like that was, you know. Oh boy. Yeah. Wow. But basically what followed was a huge health crisis because word got out in Kansas City, all of these doctors were worried about if their, you know, prescriptions had been affected. A lot of people were in the middle of chemotherapy. Right. And they knew their drugs had come from Robert Courtney. And they were trying to figure out, you know, how to move forward

with their with their medication, because you can only have so much chemotherapy. There's like a cap because it is so toxic. So it's not like they could just be like, well, we'll just do it again. Right. It's like so carefully regulated already. Wow. I didn't even think about that. Oh, my gosh.

Some people, you know, immediately started getting their chemotherapy treatments from other places as soon as they heard. And then it was like they had never lost their hair. And then it was like after the first treatment they like lost their hair. And got sick. Wow. And so. It was so diluted that they probably just.

They really just weren't getting anything out of it medicinally then. Do we know. Do we know how many people. Did anyone end up dying because they didn't get treatment for a year. We don't know exactly how many people. But eventually the FBI struck a plea deal with Robert Courtney because they knew that he hadn't just been doing it for a year. They subpoenaed his financial records and he was worth like $19 million.

Whoa. Yeah. And so they were like, this has been going on for far longer. We need to know exactly what he did and how he did it. So they struck a plea deal with him. He would serve between 17 and a half and 30 years. And he had to tell them everything he ever did. And so in those conversations, he revealed that he started it in 1988. Oh, my God. He started it with pills.

So like he would someone would have a prescription for pills, and he would just put 25 pills in. And then no one, they wouldn't notice. And so then he started thinking, well, maybe I could do it with IV bags. Oh, my God. And what's really screwed up is that he started doing it with, like, the sickest patients. So people that were, like, stage four. If it didn't work, he wouldn't get caught. like stage four if it didn't work he wouldn't get caught yeah like if someone died it wouldn't go right to him oh my god that's so bad that's so

so bad and then it just grew and grew and grew and eventually he was doing it to any medication he could they think that as far as they can tell over 4 000 people were affected um oh my god yeah and over like 72 medications were identified that he had tampered with including like fertility drugs and oh shit drugs for multiple sclerosis i mean of all people to take advantage of like especially in the name of your church like this is don't worry i had to do it for the church quote unquote i did it for jesus yeah okay like yeah wow well what's even more screwed up is that his father was a pastor and he grew up like going going to these uh church services uh tent revival um services all over the south and the Midwest. And he,

and which were very focused on like miraculous healing powers of God. But anyway, he eventually just said that he did it for greed. And at least, you know, Hey, be honest. That's step one.

Yeah. But he did it for like family, you know, friends and people in his community, his neighbor. The only time that he got upset, one of upset, one of the FBI agents I talked with, she said she asked him if he diluted his own mother's chemotherapy because she had experienced cancer.

And he got upset and he was like, I would never do that. Oh, come on. Oh, give me a break. That's too far. You were doing this to people that were going through the same thing as your own mother and you were like, this is fine. Are you kidding me? Like you would think that would give you a heart at least you'd pick like a different ailment you weren't so personally like invested in you know oh so he was a pretty pretty screwed up guy uh but yeah pillar to killer. It's stuck true again.

It never fails us, that saying. Pillar to killer. I love it. It perfectly describes Robert Courtney. We really want the phrase to not be true. Right. For some reason, people just keep proving us correct on that, though. Oh, my gosh.

Pillar to, I don't know what else it could be. Something better. Pillar to pillar, you know. Just stay a pillar and stop murdering people with cancer. Oh my gosh. Pillar to, I don't know what else it could be. Something better. Pillar to pillar, you know. Just stay a pillar and stop murdering people with cancer. I mean, yikes. I would even say killer to pillar at this point where like you just go good, you know. I would love to see a case of that.

Killer to pillar. I have yet to find one of those. We haven't started that as a catchphrase yet. It hasn't caught on, but in time, maybe. In time. Yeah. Wow. Oh my gosh. That was so, is that, that was, and so this is going to be your whole second season. You're getting more, getting more in depth with the story. Yeah. So we talked, you know, I talked with multiple FBI agents, pharmacists, people in the community, many people that are survivors, and many people that had family members that passed away as a result of his actions. So, but yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's one of those things that because 9-11 happened right as, you know, this, they were

investigating this case, and it really, the news had just started to break nationally. And then 9-11 happened. Obviously, everything shifted. The focus shifted. The FBI's resources shifted. And so I think it's still a story that a lot of people don't know. And I think that if it happened in a different time, it would be one of those stories where, like, we all would know it, you know, because it was such a big case. And not to put you on the spot here, but so you interviewed a lot of people for this series. Yeah.

Do you have anyone that personally like stuck out for you that you feel like you either learned a lot from or just had a really good back and forth with? I really enjoy talking with Melissa Osborne, who was a former FBI special agent. And she worked the case. And she just has a really interesting story. She was a pharmacist herself before joining the FBI. And so, yeah. And she was on the Robert Courtney case. And so I think she was just one of those things where she was the perfect person to work the case. She had all this knowledge and she, it was her job to get all the information out of him once he agreed to this plea deal. And so she would have to spend hours and hours in a room with this guy who she knew was a killer. And she has this one moment where she talks about that

process and how he would make like pharmacy jokes to her and try to be like buddy buddy like weirdly like and she was like i had to kind of play along yeah right read the room read the room read the room you're a killer you're not a killer anymore dude right we're not cracking jokes anymore we are on different wave legs yeah but yeah she would have to like play along and pretend to be friends with him so that he would reveal more information and um wow she said she would leave those interviews just feeling sick to her stomach and so sure i just have a lot of respect for her and i think that she's really great and i enjoyed speaking with her that's gotta be hard work knowing the background of being in farm being a pharmacist and then understanding the job and the role and then

having to quote unquote be chummy with somebody who just did it so poorly. And she must have done, I mean, she really seems like she was meant for that particular task of like- It sounds like an HBO series. I know. Right? Oh my gosh. Melissa Osborne, she'd be like the hero in the story, right? Yes, Yeah. I feel absolutely mind hunter, like having to get in the head of the person, understanding where they come from.

And it must be tough. I can't imagine. And to add to it, she had a really good friend that had she had helped her like go through cancer and her friend had passed away right before she joined the FBI. So she had this whole personal aspect to it as well. Oh, my God. So for her, you know, she was really having to deal with all of these intense emotions. But she got the job done like a real hero. Yeah, it seems like that was the trifecta of scenarios that she was meant to be a part of the cause for. Wow. Well, well done for her. that was the trifecta of scenarios that she was meant to be a part of the cause for wow well

well done here for her i'm congratulations on getting to even speak to her and then everybody else you clearly went super in depth with with the research so uh very excited to listen to the opportunities and hear you like really get into the nitty-gritty with people yeah i have i think two episodes left of those of one. So I'm almost cut up. But it's just such a good show. Honestly, you do such a great job. Thank you all so much. Well, thank you for coming on and giving us a little sneak peek of what season two is going to look like.

That's very, very exciting. I'm excited specifically now for the Melissa Osborne episode or however she's peppered in. So now we are actually going to go over on to uh the opportunist and we are going me christine and i are going to tell our stories uh so if you want to check out part two head over to the opportunist feed right now see you there