Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Mild mannered pharmacist turned fire bomber drug dealer?

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

This small-town story would make a good movie plot. A local pharmacist cooks up a scheme involving drug sales, the dark web, and a firebomb plot in this town of just over 3,000 people. Hyrum Wilson, owner of Hyrum Family Value Pharmacy in Auburn and William Burgamy, has been arrested for distribution and conspiracy to firebomb Wilson's competitor.Joining Nancy Grace today: Dr. William Morrone- Chief Medical Examiner, Bay County Michigan, Chief Medical Officer for Recovery Pathways Mark Tate- Attorney, Savannah Ga., represents Chatham County South Carolina, suing Opioid Manufacturers   Derek Ellington - Expert in online activity, certified fraud examiner, certified video forensics expert, licensed private investigator Bobby Chacon - Former Special Agent FBI, screenwriter of "Criminal Minds"  Alexis Tereszcuk - Investigative Journalist, CrimeOnline Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. How does a beloved, within the community, pharmacist end up being named as part of a firebombing plot? You know when I go to the pharmacist and say the twins are running a fever or the twins have the sniffles, what should I do? How do you compare aspirin versus Tylenol versus acetaminophen? Well, I don't expect the man or the woman on the other side of the counter to be plotting a fire bomb attempt. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. I want you to take a listen because not only is this beloved in the community pharmacist

well known, been practicing a long time, but he was also somewhat of an infomercial star. Take a listen to Hiram Wilson on Modern Living with Kathy Ireland. Our scars are our unique traits that give us personal identity. However, sometimes they can also affect our confidence. Hiram Wilson, CEO of Farmworks, recently joined us to share how his company's product, Scargenix, restores our self-image. Welcome, Hiram. Oh, thank you for having me. Hiram, can you tell us how you got started in the skincare industry?

Absolutely. It started kind of organically. I'm a pharmacist, and so I get questions from patients all the time, whether I'm working or not. And just by listening to what they're asking over time, you kind of learn what things are most important to them. And I had a lot of people ask questions about their skin and what they could use for it. And I came to realize there wasn't a whole lot of good options. Guys, he has his customers, his clients, his patients ask him questions all the time. I wonder if some of those questions are, how do you make a fire bomb?

With me, an all-star panel to break it down and put it back together again. First of all, Dr. William Maroney, the chief medical examiner, Bay County, Michigan, chief medical officer, Recovery Pathways, created a new portable treatment center for oxycodone addicts all over the country. It's a rolling RV medical treatment facility. Mark Tate with me, renowned lawyer,

joining me out of Savannah, represents Chatham County, South Carolina, suing opioid manufacturers. And you can find him at TateLawGroup.com. Derek Ellington joining us today, expert in fraud and online activity. Bobby Chacon, former special agent with the FBI, screenwriter of Criminal Minds. And special guest Alexis Tereschuk joining us, investigative journalist, CrimeOnline.com. Wow, that was a mouthful. Let me go first to you, Alexis Tereschuk. How do you go from appearing on Kathy Ireland? Now, she's a Sports Illustrated

model, correct? Supermodel, gorgeous, has her own show. It's called Modern Living, and that was airing on Bloomberg and WE tv. So how does a pharmacist end up sitting on a sofa with Kathy Ireland? He created his own product line. A pharmacist, you know, is a medical professional, and he created this line that would help ease scars. So she being, you know, a medical professional and he created this line that would help ease scars so she being you know a health someone who's so into health and has her own program trying to help people all over the world with skin problems she brought him on and you're right she is a supermodel cover sports illustrated she has she lives in beverly hill she is really an impressive businesswoman and so she brings on this pharmacist.

Let's just say Kathy Ireland is no idiot. She's not just beauty. She's brains. You think she worked her way up from nothing to get on Sports Illustrated and then land this program and have, like, this mega-million-dollar franchise? You know, just an aside, Alexis Treschuk, they say the same thing about Jessica Simpson, that she's a dumb blonde because of her reality show. Remember she had with Nick Lachey? Uh-uh. You know, just an aside, Alexis Treschuk, they say the same thing about Jessica Simpson, that she's a dumb blonde because of her reality show.

Remember she had with Nick Lachey? Uh-uh. This girl is sitting on like a billion-dollar industry of selling shoes and clothes and products online. She's laughing all the way to the bank. Same thing with Kathy Ireland. So she brings in this guy, Hiram Wilson, to Dr. William Maroney. Dr. Maroney, before I became a crime fighter, you know, my mother wanted me to become a pharmacist. I had never even taken chemistry. I go to college. The very first lab we have, chemistry lab,

I passed out because of the smell of the chemicals. Okay okay so it takes a unique mind to be a pharmacist what do you have to do to be a pharmacist don't get offended but is it like going to medical school how long don't don't don't stomp off in a huff Maroney I know that doctors are smarter than everybody else okay but what do you have to do to be a pharmacist? Well, you have to take a lot of the same science classes, and pharmacists have to have a business sense and a better communication. You know, the bedside manner they have is every single patient that walks through the door

has a question, and you have to explain the prescription drugs and the regular drugs, and you have to break it down. You have to dumb it down. You mean doctors don't have to do that? No, they're arrogant. You said that, not me. I'm not going to let the twins doctors hear me say they're arrogant.

But you did say that. Your words, not mine. Okay, go ahead. So what kind of schooling, that's what I'm trying to get at at how many years of school do you go to to be a pharmacist they have recently in the last decade made the highest level pharmacist a doctor of pharmacy called a farm d like an md and you take four years of college and then you go to pharmacy school you used to just go to college that was pharmacy school and you could be in and out in four years, but it's not four years of college plus.

And you know, that's really important because these are the gatekeepers to the medicine. Yeah. And you have to have somebody who's smart and who cares and who's empathetic at that end because doctors are rushed they can't explain stuff well here's the thing you've got to be careful who you give the keys to the kingdom yeah in other words to all that med opioids oxycontin just there's just so many painkillers and powerful meds guys in addition in addition to the pharmacist, Hiram Wilson, ending up sitting on a sofa next to Kathy Ireland, he brings on a special guest with him. Now, I want you to pay special attention to this. It's your cut number six.

This is Hiram Wilson, all with Kathy Ireland, with her lifestyle show, Modern Living on Bloomberg WeTV. And he brings on a patient named William Burgamy IV. About 10 years ago, I got into a little accident and I had some scarring on my face and it stuck with me ever since. Up until using Scargenics and utilizing the product, I've been using it for about 45 days now. And the lines have completely blended in with my skin tone.

Everything is blended together very, very well, and you can't even see them anymore. The product is light, and once I put the product on, there's no need to even wipe my hands off afterwards. The reason why I turned towards Scargenics was because it has a lot of natural properties in it. It's not overloading. I felt like it wasn't something that was too over-promising or pushed upon me.

Okay, I've heard enough of William Burgamy IV. You know, I want to go out now to Bobby Chacon, joining me, former FBI Special Agent Greenwriter for Criminal Minds. Bobby, you know, when I would prosecute a case, let's just say a dope lord, I didn't want to just get him. I wanted to get all the cockroaches within his industry. So you look at who the dope lord, that's just an example, is hanging out with.

I guarantee you, they're not hanging out with nuns and priests and virgins. So you look around at their associates. You look at where they meet. Do they go to the diner or do they go to the strip club or the drug den or the crack house or do they meet in their car you have to put them under surveillance to find out who they're hanging out with and i guarantee you it's all business so step number one you look not only at a target but their associates how do you do that bobby chacon well you know you do it a number of ways sometimes they make it harder for you by being very surveillance conscious, and sometimes they make it easier for you.

And when they go on TV and they bring in their friends and sit on a couch next to them and give testimonials for other things they're doing, it makes it easier to look at that person and establish a network of contacts that that person currently has. I mean, this is a really interesting case because they actually... You're not kidding, Bobby. And it's all about scargenics. You get rid of your scars with this newly created formula. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. You know, they went from sitting on the sofa with Kathy Ireland, the beauty queen, to this. Take a listen to CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter Dave Mack.

Federal investigators say Hiram Wilson regularly mailed thousands of prescription pills, including opioids, from the Nebraska pharmacy he ran to William Burgamy. William Burgamy, in turn, allegedly advertised and sold the drugs on the dark web under the name of never pressed rx selling oxycodone and other narcotics without a prescription a cut of the profits were then paid to wilson as bitcoin payments wire transfers and bundles of cash through the mail the dark web transactions work the same way as any online transaction users follow instructions to place an order and pay for it with cryptocurrency like

Bitcoin. Burgamy used the U.S. Postal Service to ship the products. The FBI photographed Burgamy as he made trips to the local post offices where he allegedly mailed prescription drugs to various dark web clients. Burgamy used several accounts to move the money and would then swap the Bitcoin out for U.S. currency. Okay, I'm trying to get my mind around what this pharmacist is allegedly up to. We are talking about the neighborhood pharmacist that you go to when your child has a cough or the sniffles or a fever. How could he be part of the dark web sending unlicensed, unprescribed painkillers through the U.S. mail using Bitcoin?

Okay, first of all, back to you, Bobby Chacon, former special agent, FBI. Explain, in a nutshell if you can, what is the dark web? Well, the dark web is a kind of a sub-basement of the Internet where there are many layers of encryption that you need to get through. And so you need special skills and special knowledge to just to find this place, you know, on the Internet or some people call it apart from the Internet. But it's really a deep, dark kind of place. And we say dark because it's very difficult to get to.

You need to know how to get there. You need to know the keystrokes, basically, that you need to type into your computer. Hold on, Bobby. I've got to go to our computer expert. I'm going to circle back to get there. You need to know the keystrokes, basically, that you need to type into your computer. Hold on, Bobby. I've got to go to our computer expert, and I'm going to circle back to you, Bobby. Derek Ellington, expert online activity, certified fraud examiner at ellington.net. Derek Ellington, I'm always struck by pedophiles in that.

They say, I was just looking up X and suddenly child porn jumped onto my screen you know what in all the years I have looked up murders murder weapons murder for hire you name every kind of crime I have never had child porn or pornography at all just pop up on my screen. It's never happened. Has it happened to you, Brett? No. Okay, so how does this work to you, Derek Ellington? How do you go to the Internet, and everybody types in Google,

how do you suddenly end up on the dark web? Well, Nancy, as my mother would say, if you were where you were supposed to be doing what you were supposed to be doing, this would not have happened. But I think it's important for the listeners to understand that for most of us, when we start our internet journey, we will go to something like a search engine, which is what we call Google, Bing, Yahoo. And when you search using Google, you're not actually searching the internet. You're searching a list of internet sites that someone else has created for you. And when they make that list, they make choices about what to leave in, what to take out and stuff. So one way of sort of looking

at what the dark web is, is in a way you can think of it like maybe there's a restaurant or a store in your town and they don't advertise. They have a building, but they don't have a sign out front. And the only way you know where it is, is if someone tells you specifically where it is. Maybe when you get there, there's a doorman or a bouncer that asks you for a password or some credentials. Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Mm-hmm. What? Okay, so I want to go to a restaurant, but they don't have a sign and they don't advertise.

And when I get there, I have to show a bounce or some kind of ID and a secret code. Yeah, no. Well, and the great thing is this is something like you see a lot with even pop-up restaurants or something. So there's a lot of exclusivity in our culture anyway when it comes to things like that. But picture once you walk through that door, maybe it's just a simple little shop that sells one particular thing, or it could be a sprawling shopping mall with every type of product imaginable. And in essence, the dark web is simply websites selling products, and because of the nature of the products, they don't want to be, you know, easily accessible on Main Street. But how do you even get to the dark web? You go to Google and type in dark web. Actually, you know, it does take a couple steps, but it doesn't really require

that much effort. And in fact, it's not something that you really have to be a hacker or computer expert to do because the steps are laid out pretty easy. So you don't get directly to the dark web from Google, but the instructions are there. In essence, what you would do is you can use your regular browser or special browsers that look for these sites that use a different kind of set of directions. Okay, stop right there because there's a thing called what? Well, there are certain browsers. One is called Tor. Are you saying P-O-O-R?

What are you saying? T-O-R, Tor. It's something called a Tor browser. Okay, wait a minute. If you don't know about the dark red, why are you holding up a sign that says T-O-R before he could even say it? Never mind. I don't want to know.

Okay, so you basically have to work at it to get into the dark web. So, Alexis Tereschuk, explain to me how these allegations against a mild-mannered pharmacist, I mean, using the dark web to sell illegal opiates. And when we say, Dr. William Maroney, illegal opiates, what are we talking about? You're talking about anything that has not passed through traditional licensing and business pathways. It's not prescribed, it's not covered by insurance, and it's obtained through sources that are not acceptable. And what do you mean by that? Because if somebody wants pain relievers and they don't want to go to the doctor, tell me why this is so wrong. The traditional way you do this is you go to a doctor with a license, he writes a prescription, you go to a pharmacy with a license, and it's all regulated by your state and the DEA. If you skip all those, you're passing regulations

and rejecting the laws that control our medicine for safety reasons. Okay, so we're talking about opium, heroin, fentanyl, morphine, codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone. Same thing. It's all the same. It's all the same. All right, and the reason we don't want people to have access to that without a legitimate pharmacist or a legitimate prescription is because it will be misused, given to children, given to teens, given to people that are already addicts, people that are not really in pain. That's what we're talking about, correct, Dr. Maroney? Yes, and a perfect example is Prince put something in his mouth

that he thought was a narco. It was full of fentanyl, and he died. That's a perfect example of why we follow regulatory pathways. Dope, smack, H, train, thunder, black tar, china, white horse, antifreeze, brown sugar, Henry horse, skag, hero, hell dust, junk. I mean, it goes on and on and on. Oxy. I mean, there's a million names for street drugs.

So, Alexis Tereschuk, how did this all blow up? Oh, that was a bad pun, because we're talking about a firebomb. But I'm not understanding how we went from the mild-mannered pharmacist that everybody knows, he's on the sofa with Kathy Ireland, to an alleged firebomb plot. guys we are talking about hyrum wilson a 41 year old pharmacist that is now tangled up in a fire bomb plot and william bergamy IV, that sounds impressive, somehow is tangled up in it with him. So Alexis, take a listen just for one moment to CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter,

cut three, Dave Mack. The details of Hiram Wilson's firebombing plan was uncovered during William Burgamy's arrest. During a search of Burgamy's home, investigators found notes for Operation Firewood in a handwritten notebook and a leather binder and text messages with Wilson on Burgamy's phone. Wilson instructed Burgamy and an unnamed individual to break into the pharmacy and steal drugs. Wilson allegedly told Burgamy that the competitor pharmacy did three times the business he did, so they should have three times the pills. Wilson told them the drugs would be in alphabetical order and they should focus on H to O, hydrocodone to oxycodone.

After stealing the drugs, he instructed the pair to blow the place up using Molotov cocktails enhanced with styrofoam as a thickening agent to burn it to the ground. Guys, you're hearing our friend Dave Mack at CrimeOnline.com. This is what is being alleged right now, that pharmacist Hiram Wilson illegally selling prescription opioids from his shop, Hiram's family value pharmacy, Auburn, Nebraska, on the dark web. But he needed more drugs to keep the illegal side business going. So Mr. Wilson, Hiram Wilson, brings in a henchman. So Alexis Tereszczuk, CrimeOnline.com, explain to me how Hiram Wilson gets tangled up with this guy, Burgamy the Fourth. So, he has found him, and he is using him to... Whoa, whoa. Please use proper nouns.

Who found who? Sorry. Hiram, the pharmacist, has found William Burgamy. You're on a first-name basis with the alleged fire bomber? Pharmacist Hiram Wilson found William Burgamy IV where? They have known each other for years. They have apparently been doing businesses together. They've been doing this skin care line. It's unclear how the two actually know each other,

but the pharmacist is using Burgamy to illegally sell the hydrocodone he gets. So pharmacies are given a certain amount of drugs every month from the FDA. You are a pharmacist. You have 12 patients. You get 10 pills per month per patient. You get 120 pills per month. That's it. You don't get any more.

You have a certain amount. Well, the pharmacist decided that he wanted to sell more because he was giving them to Burgundy. Burgundy is selling them on the dark web for a huge profit. If he's able to get it covered by insurance, he gets maybe $10 per pill. If he's selling it through this dark web, he's making $100 per pill. And also, I just want to say, I tried to get on the dark web while investigating this story. I don't think it's as easy as the previous guest had said. My husband really said, you might get in a little bit of trouble here. You can't just get there from Google Chrome or anything. Well, I think you're right about that, Alexis Tereshchuk. It may be easy for Derek Ellington, because he's an online expert

who specializes in fraud, but for regular people. But I got to warn you, I think your husband is right, Alexis Torres-Chuck, because that's how the FBI initially found Burgamy the Fourth, because they can get onto the dark web just like Derrick Ellington can. And they see this guy on the dark web and begin investigating him. And where does the crooked path lead straight to the hometown pharmacist? Mark Tate is a special guest joining me today. He's a renowned attorney out of Savannah. And Tate has actually taken on opioid manufacturers.

And that is not easy. You can find them at TateLawGroup.com. Mark Tate, is it true that you actually met the hometown pharmacist, Hiram Wilson, before the firebombing? Go ahead. I met him long before the firebombing. I met him at an establishment that serves alcohol, and this Nebraska pharmacist, after that intervention where he was acting pretty peculiarly,

wound up leaving that bar involuntarily. Okay, you know what, please don't talk like a lawyer. Now, I love it when opposing counsel does it in court because the jurors go, but what are you saying? Did he get thrown out of a bar? What happened? No, an ambulance carried him away after he was inappropriate and belligerent and violent with me.

Whoa, you actually got in a fight with Hiram Wilson. I got in a fight with that guy. Why? Over what? Did you know him before that? Oh, hell no. He tried to take my son's cigar. It's a lengthy and involved story. Okay, wait a minute. what? Did you know him before that? Oh, hell no. He tried to take my son's cigar. How?

It's a lengthy and involved story. Okay, wait a minute. How old is your son? 23. And when did this occur? About two or three years ago. So when he's 20? What's the drinking limit in your jurisdiction? We were not

in the United States. Uh-huh. Okay, So you take your son off site and you're in a bar. Yeah. Hey, you knew this was coming, Tate. You take your son out for a cigar and a drink. Now, did you not just hear Derek Ellington's mother say, if you were where you're supposed to be, this would not have happened. Oh, yes, I absolutely agree. We were where we were supposed to be. How do you get in a fight? You know how close you came to big trouble? This is a guy that is accused in an intricate plot by the feds,

and they don't play, all right? For you to get charged by a fed, they've got boxes and boxes of documents on you. I know. I was the fed for a while. So you're in a bar. How many stories start that way? I'm in a bar, but normally they don't say next,

with my son and a cigar. What did Hiram Wilson do? We were approached by him, and he tried to take my son's cigar. My son told him he couldn't get it to him because he had tuberculosis, which was a complete lie and a joke. And I asked this fella to leave us because we would never be at the level he was. He refused to leave and became belligerent. My son then told him, you have no idea what you're about to get into.

The guy came at me and I had to obviously defend what was happening. You had to defend the cigar? I had to defend the way he squared up on my son. On your son? You darn right. You start with me and my twins and you'll see nothing but teeth and nails. Uh-uh. No.

So you get in a fight in a bar and he gets taken away. What? did you punch him? Oh, no, no, no, no. He came at me, and I just stepped aside and pushed him, and he lost his footing, I think. You know, if I were you and you tell that story in the future, I'd go with the punch because it's just a whole lot better story.

Well, I'm telling you, the reason I'm going with that story, Mrs. Grace, Ms. MS. Ms. Grace is that the security guard who didn't want there to be any trouble for me said Ms. That's it when the police arrived you tell them the man lost his footing and hit his head. He didn't want there to be anything worse than that. You know what I find

interesting about that story and I don't know quite how to explain it, but I'm going to go to you, Bobby Chacon, following up on Mark Tate's story of what happened down in the islands. Sounds like by that accent it was in Jamaica. But... Came in.

Okay. Bobby Chacon, are you surprised at all? Because I know he's the hometown pharmacist involved in a firebombing plot with some thug, but the way I would never dream of going up to someone at a bar or a restaurant or anywhere and getting in a fight because they wouldn't sell me something they had on their person and making threats just out of the blue such as, hey, you don't know who you're dealing with. Yeah, it seems like he was a hometown pharmacist that wanted to be a whole lot more, right?

He had other businesses. He had infomercials. He was living, in his mind at least, a little larger than his hometown pharmacy persona might have indicated. And so it seems like he had some personality issues that he wanted to be a lot bigger than than he was and that's indicated by some of his not only his behavior but some of his correspondence um you know with the guy who was selling drugs for him and things like that so i think that that his behavior is is kind of consistent throughout in in both the infomotion world and and and his

is dealing with his competitive pharmacies in that small town. And obviously now when he's on vacation or, you know, away from that town, he seems to be a guy who is living a little larger, at least in his mind, than a small-town pharmacist. Well, you may call it living larger, but I call it sticking one foot in hell. I'd rather have the hometown pharmacist any day than a guy involved with selling opioids over the dark web. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, thank you for being with us here at Crime Stories.

If you were to look at these two like I'm looking at them right now, you can see them on CrimeOnline.com. They look like ordinary business people. I'm looking at Hiram Wilson and William Anderson Burgamy IV. They look like upstanding business guys you know well manicured well groomed got on a suit the works that's not at all what they are appearances can be so misleading back to you Alexis Tereschuk joining us crimeonline.com break it down tell me so the FBI start looking at Burgamy the 4th on the dark web. They can get on there too and see what he's doing.

Dealing dope with Bitcoin, hoping to cover his tracks by not using credit cards or regular U.S. currency. Then what happens? How does a firebomb get into this, Alexis? So the FBI sets up this guy. They don't set him up. That's not the right word. The FBI purchases drugs from Burgamy four times. So to prove that he is selling these drugs, they've set him up. So they finally get enough evidence that he is dealing drugs on the dark web.

And they get a search warrant from a judge. And they go in his house to arrest him for selling these illegal drugs and they find a cache of weapons of yep rifles you know ar-15 rifles they find all the things to make the molotov cocktail and they find a notebook handwritten notebook the nicest handwriting i have ever seen, truly. You know, and even you can see they open up the notebook, and it has a plan for something called Firewood. They're looking at this.

Firewood. You mean Operation Firewood? Yes. Operation Firewood. What idiots to keep written notes and even name, and this is a firebombing plot, to name it Operation Firewood sitting there with all of your Molotov cocktail ingredients and your cache of automatic weapons. Okay, go ahead, idiots. So the police find this, and they see basically a detailed plan laid out,

like I need a map, I need to know exactly where it is. Here are the details about where the drugs are going to be stored in this other pharmacy. And as Dave Mack said, you know, go for the H and the O, which is what the pharmacist told him. So they have the whole plan right there. Whoa, H and O. I assume you're talking about oxycodone and all I can think of are H's. Oh, hydrocodone. Okay, gotcha.

And? It's like the 500, not 500, but hugely more powerful than Tylenol. You know, like the most powerful painkiller you can take in a pill form. They give it to you after major surgeries, like back surgery, colapsalum surgery, anything like that. So the police say, there is this guy, this pharmacist in Nebraska, this guy has been working with. First, they're thinking, oh, we got it. That's where he got the drug from because this guy, Bergamy, he wasn't making these drugs and he

wasn't certainly because he was saying when he was advertising on the dark web, this is grade A plus pharmacy level. And I can even show you the prescription bottle that will show you that this is the real deal. And the investigating officer from the FBI said he knows in his experience investigating this stuff for over a decade that this is high level. These are high level drugs. So these come from a pharmacy. Operation Firewood. Who are these two going to firebomb? Because so far, all I hear is ingredients in the home for a Molotov, which, I mean, you can

make that out of any accelerant and put it in a jar, cover it, and throw it. But it can be more sophisticated than that. So, the ingredients for a Molotov cocktail, the cache of automatic weapons, and this journal, very detailed, very precise, called Operation Firewood. So who are they going to bomb? They're going to bomb the local pharmacy, the one right down the road in the same town as Hiram's. Why? Because Wilson needs more drugs. He is only allotted a certain amount for his customers. Well, he's not the biggest pharmacy in town.

This other pharmacy, his competitor does three times the business. He has three times as many customers. But why firebomb them? This is what we know. To put him out of business. Oh, I see. So he'll be the only game in town. Texts have emerged between the two men revealing they had been planning Operation Firewood for months on end.

Burgamy and another, who we now know to be the pharmacist, were to don skull masks, arm themselves with assault rifle and shotguns, and hit the rival pharmacy at night. They even had a getaway map showing the fastest routes to Kansas and Missouri that they would take after the fire bombing. They hoped destroying the rival business would send its clients to Wilson and he could increase the amount of prescription drugs the pharmacy was allowed to order. Dr. William Maroney. Jump in. Help me out.

The pharmacist, I mean, they've got it right down to, hey, we'll wear skull caps, and you take the AR, and I'll take the shot. It sounds like two fifth graders planning a firebombing. These guys watch too much TV. Way too much. You know, if you're really doing your job and you're working hard, you don't have time for this stuff. But one of your guests, interestingly, put out something that the general public doesn't know. There are quotas, opiate quotas, quotas on morphine,

quotas on hydrocodone, quotas on oxycodone. And if you sell your quota earlier in the month, you can't fill any more. So they were driven by greed and the love of money, because in the pharmaceutical industry, the federal regulations are trying to encourage a more conservative presentation. Don't forget, everybody's been blaming the doctors for a decade on this opioid crisis. All those prescriptions had to get filled by a pharmacy. Pharmacists, pharmacies, pharmacy corporations, they're all just as guilty the doctors wrote the prescription but some fool out there had to fill it and these over prescribing practices led to federal regulation that introduced quotas the public doesn't know about these mess you know mark tate

uh you're an attorney in savannah and you've taken on the big opioid manufacturers. That's not easy. But so often, and I would have this happen when I would be trying cases all the time, you meet a person and they seem like one thing. There's something else altogether. And to look at these guys, I'm looking at the photos right now, they look like ordinary businessmen. He looks like a pharmacist, a young pharmacist.

And the other one, Burgamy IV, they just look like regular guys and they present as regular people who would know ever that what you're dealing with is someone plotting a firebomb that could result in death or dismemberment and this dark web dope dealing. You're a pharmacist, Tate. Right. Well, I find this really to be fascinating because these, first of all,

the pharmacist, Mr. Wilson, in fact, is almost literally a snake oil salesman. He's taking oil from the nuts of an endangered tree in the Amazon and mixing it with some aloe vera and selling it as scar stuff. You know, it's not FDA approved. So that's a little bit sketchy. of course, that he's hooked up with the guy who threw the Tor browser, which gets its name from the original project, the Onion router, to find secret websites, hooks up with him and is pumping opiates through him that are purchased with Bitcoin. And then they launder that money. And then they come up with this idea of blowing up their only competitor in Nebraska so he can up his allocation by the distributor.

Guys, I want you to hear this tape. One more thing. You've got to hear this. Roll Dave Mack, Crime Online. Federal investigators found that Hiram Wilson provided a satellite photo of the area with escape routes. Wilson had described the two ways of escaping, one through town, the other headed south. At one point, Burgamy told Wilson that he intended to carry at least one rifle and at least one handgun while breaking into, stealing from, and firebombing the victim pharmacy. Text messages showed that Burgamy made a list of equipment that would be needed to pull off the plan, a list that included body armor, weapons, bottles, lighter fluid, and other materials. Agents later found eight loaded weapons at Burgamy's Maryland

residence, including two AR-15 style semi-automatic rifles. Amazing. They kept such copious notes in their planning that it's going to be like shooting a fish in a barrel come trial time. Alexis Reschuk, where does it stand right now? So these guys were arrested and the police are prosecuting them. The thing is, though, these two are have with this evidence, all they seem to be doing is blaming each other. Oh, I love that, Alexis. When you get two co-defendants and they both go, because you can use all that at trial. And we wait as justice unfolds. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend.