The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Florida Oxycodone Kingpin Reveals Running MASSIVE Pill Empire & Fueling The American Opioid Crisis

Episode Date: May 11, 2024

Chris George ran one of the most successful and notorious "pill mill" pharmacies in Florida at the height of the oxycontin opioid epidemic in the late 2000s. He began his criminal career as a teenager buying a selling illegal steroids and eventually ran it through a business front with his brother. In his late 20s he entered the burgeoning pain management industry and quickly Chris and his brother were running the largest pain pill mill company in the state; South Florida Pain Clinic. His entire family entered the business with him and soon he caught the attention of the feds and was eventually served 10 years in prison. Today he runs a legitimate successful business and has been featured in numerous documentaries, television series', and news shows telling his story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The clinics weren't good for this country. The doctors knew what they were doing. I knew they were drug addicts. We didn't care about helping people out, just giving as many pills as possible. My guest today is a man named Chris George. Chris is an entrepreneur from South Florida, who was responsible for opening up the first pill mill that became synonymous with the American opioid crisis.

Chris owned and operated dozens of pain pill clinics that distributed hundreds of millions of opioid pills like Roxies and OxyCocon. Well, what did you? he was doing was technically legal, Chris got swept up in the federal crackdown that surrounded the early days of the opioid crisis. He came on to tell us about a ton of dirty, underhanded, corrupt things that the FBI and the DEA did to him that eventually landed him in federal prison for 12 years. We've never had anyone like him on the show before. He is the scarface of pharmaceutical drugs. And for more content with Chris, go over to patreon.com

The Connect Show. Also, I have a quick tour announcement. On June 20th, I will be headlining at the Tempe Improft Comedy Club in Phoenix, Arizona. And on June 21st and 22nd, I'll be in the Dallas Fort Worth area at the Big Laughs Comedy Club in Fort Worth. I got four shows there. Get your tickets at linktree.com slash Johnny Mitchell. Okay, without further ado, I give you Chris George right here in the connect with Johnny Mitchell. There's like 20 people in the room. And they want to scare me to taking a plea. We're going to show you what we have on you. And they start playing some of the phone taps. Here's how it's going to work. Your wife's pregnant. She's going to go to jail

right now. Your mom's going to go to jail right now with no bond. And your brother who's pleading out, I told us everything he did wrong, isn't going to plea out, he's going to try it with doing it light. That's when I see lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door,

and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shank. It's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. You were part of, you were at the apex of this thing that changed the American drug landscape, which was the opioid crisis. You're from Florida, which is ground zero for that. You grew up. Tell us about how you grew up. Where you grew up? I mean, I grew up in West Palm. My whole life, I was born and raised there.

I mean, my parents moved there, you know, a while ago from New York. And, you know, and I grew up in. And we grew up a nice area, like Royal Palm, Wellington. So, you know, went to school there, went the college around there. What did your parents do? My dad was a home builder. And then my mom worked for him for a little while. And then, you know, they got divorced and I was around eight. And then she just kind of did real estate stuff, like realtor work and secretary stuff, like, you know, for some property management companies.

Yeah, yeah. Did you know, do you remember way? when opioids first became a thing? Does that like resonate with you? Did you know what drugs were at a young age? Yeah, I know what drugs were, but when it comes to these pills, like I never heard of a Roxy before or never even seen one. So when I was in the building houses and the market crashed and I went into this, I already had a steroid clinic. It was an online steroid clinic. So I can tell. use some of your product. I haven't used in a while.

You're a ripped kid. Yeah, it's been a while. But that doctor was like, hey, you know, let's start up a clinic and I'll prescribe pain medication. And I'm just like, nah, I mean, how's that going to work? Like, how are you getting enough business for? Is it really going to make it? It didn't seem like it would.

Right. So you've got an entrepreneurial mind, though. I mean, yeah. I always have my own businesses. You know, they're building or, you know, doing the steroid companies or the pain clinics. Yeah. What was your earliest business? Like, did you sell illegal drugs? Like when you were in high school?

Yeah. You did. Okay. Yeah. And it was steroids and like GHB. Okay. Can you tell us about that business? I have no clue about how the steroid business, the market works. Do you mean illegal one? The black market or the legal one? Both of them. Okay. Well, the illegal one was just like in high school, you know, because my dad was a builder,

we knew a lot of older people. So we had like more connections to things like steroids and stuff like that. So, why? Why is that? Because they get them prescribed? No, because there's kids in high school back then didn't have steroids. They didn't have access to them, which it's harder to get, I guess. Nobody was doing it. So me and my brother did him in high school. We're like the first ones. Now I know all the high school kids do it. But back then it was just me and him. So we got into selling those. Where do you source them? It was from a guy, you know, local guy. Then eventually I got him on the internet from like Yugoslavia and right. There's places in Europe. And I eventually got arrested for it because a package got stopped by customs. And, you know, it was a controlled delivery.

Right. So I ended up, you know, getting in trouble for steroids. Did you get a felony? Yeah. Wow. How old were you? God, the steroids were probably when I was like 22, 23. How were you successful in that?

Like, how much money did you make? It was like maybe $2,000 a week. But I was in college. Now it was done, so it was good money for back then. Totally. And what do you sell? It was easy.

So it's like, you selling testosterone shots? It was testosterone. And then the stuff like to lose weight, just all different medicate, all different steroids, you know, Diana Ball,

Deca, summer pills, summer injection. Just a mix, whatever, whatever someone wanted. And most of that shit is legal, right?

Like you can go get that prescribed to you. Can you not? Yeah, they're all prescription. drugs. They're not like black market drugs, but the way we got them, you know, they came from some pharmacy somewhere. But by the time they got to me, you know, they were out of the, out of the hands of whoever got prescribed it or made it. So it becomes a felony when you sell them on the black market, even though they are legal over the counter. Or possess them. Like any, it's like having

a prescription drug, like say Roxy's that you don't have a script to. You know, it's a prescription drug. It's a legal, legitimate drug, but you still have to have a prescription. to have it. So is selling any kind of over-the-counter drug or medicine when you sell it on the black market, could that be felonious? Could you get a felony for that? Oh yeah. Yeah, it is. So even like something that's not an opioid or a steroid, right? Name something that's over-the-counter. Wait, over-the-counter, but prescription. Yeah, that's what that means. Like Xanax or Valium. Right. So even that is, if you're selling that black market, that's illegal. Oh, yeah. Wow. Okay. So anything like that is,

And so then when I got in trouble for the steroids, I was like, all right, well, I want to do steroids still. But I, you know, I got to do it legally now because I'm on probation for it. Like, I got to, I went to jail for like six months for it. But it was like easy. Like I had a work release. Was that, did you, had you graduated college at the time? No, I was in college. Where'd you go to college?

At Florida International University. So I stopped going to college that time. I was pretty much done anyways. I was a non-degree seeking student. So I was just taking whatever class I wanted. I wasn't trying to get a degree because I'm like, I'm not going to work for. anybody. I don't really need that piece of paper. But I was on probation for steroids and I'm like, man, I got to do this legally somehow. So I was going online, doing the research. And now there's like

HRT clinics that do this stuff, like a lot. But back then there really wasn't. So I found some dentist that would prescribe it to me online. And so I got it like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, that for a while. And then I was like, you know what? I should open up a place that just does this. You know, I find a doctor online and, you know, just prescribe them online to people because I think there's a good demand for people like me and just, you know, other people, older people and people that want to work out with it. Yeah. So that's what I did.

And we started the steroid claims, me and my brother, my twin brother. Okay. And how did that go? Did you succeed? Oh, it was great. Yeah. That we started in a couple years before the pain clinics. So it lasted all the way when they rest us for the pain clinics, they rest us for that also.

Okay. But you're, this was a legal business, the steroid, online steroid store. Yeah. It was prescription. you know, yes and no. Like if someone, my brother made it kind of illegal because someone would call up and they would just give the guy,

like they wouldn't have a doctor sign the script. They would just sign the doctor's name on stuff and just give them whatever. He kind of made like what could have been a real legal business, which I do all the time now, you know, illegal. Sometimes they did it the right way, but not as much.

And he ran it mostly. I was still building house at that time. So, you know, I was partners with them on it, but I wasn't like hands-up. on day-day activities of it. So explain how that works. So you've got an online steroid clinic.

You get, you're supplied by doctors and dentists. How does the consumer legally obtain that? You're middle-manning steroids to the consumer. How does that process is supposed to work legally?

Well, we weren't really the middleman. So we had the steroid clinic that had the doctor that worked for us. And And then, you know, we'd advertise online or we were the first ones ever advertised in a bodybuilding magazine. We had a full page ad in like Flex magazine, which is like, you're not supposed to do it for bodybuilding purposes. That's illegal. It's supposed to be for like people that have like testosterone deficiencies. So we didn't care.

We just advertised wherever. And it worked really well because all the bodyblowers wanted it. So then they just kind of us and we order them to get a blood test at lab core request. They get the test. You know, a lot of people do have lower levels. or it's low enough where doctor can say, yeah, I'll give you a little bit testosterone. And then you give them a lot, though. Or if it's higher, they'll just say, hey, I'm on stuff right now.

So that's why it's higher. It's working for me. Oh, so they get the script filled or they, excuse me, they get the blood test and the script from the doctor. And then they bring you that script and you fill it. No, we do it all. So it was all online. It wasn't a person. Okay.

So they're going to call us. We'll get the blood test. We'll give it to the doctor or they would just do whatever and get them the medication. and then we'd have our own pharmacy fill it and then ship it to them in the mail. Okay. So you're running the pharmacy. You're just using the doctors as like partners, basically, to fulfill the orders. Yeah, it was just one doctor.

Okay. You know, one doctor would do it all. We had a couple clinics at one point, so we had more than one, but one doctor per clinic. That's all we really needed. I mean, it's real easy for them. Like, they didn't really review a whole lot. It's like, oh, okay, your test is low. Here's some testosterone.

And actually the patient would ask what they wanted. And then we just give it to them growth hormone, testosterone, whatever. Yeah. So the doctors are the ones that have the supply. Is that correct? Where are you guys sourcing the product? From the pharmacy. I don't get it.

Aren't you guys the pharmacy? No. So we're the steroid clinic. Why go to you when they could just go to the pharmacy? Because you've got to have a prescription. So we give them the prescription. But we could have given the script and they can feel. go anywhere, but then we don't make much money off it.

We want to sell them the drugs too. We buy a bottle of tests for $15, sell it to them for $150. Wow. So we at first bought from a compounding pharmacy, and it would go through us then. We were like the middleman. Eventually, I started my own pharmacy, compound pharmacy, which we made our own drugs. So I'd buy like, you know, a kilo of testosterone and anathet or sypinate. And then we had all the machines, a clean room.

We'd make it, put it in vials with our label on it, with our name on it. So then it was like a, it was pretty legitimate. So now you're like a vertical operation. You're like you're buying wholesale and bagging it out and selling it retail. Yeah, we're doing every part of it. Wow. That's how you got to do it to make the most money. How much is a kilo of raw testosterone cost?

Jeez. It wasn't much. It's like a couple thousand. But that makes a ton of bottles, a ton of vials. How much you make off of it, off a brick of test? I know a bottle of tests. This is a long time ago, but a bottle of test, a 10-millimeter bottle would cost us like $2 to make. make and our pharmacy would sell it to our clinic for like $15.

And we kept the business separate just so that one had its own profit. And the pharmacy also we sold to other places eventually when they opened up. Wow. So you started supplying wholesale to other dealers, so to speak. Yeah, but other HRT clinics, but they didn't know it was us or they wouldn't buy from us. Why? Because we're the competition. Right.

They don't want to help us out. Right. So we had a different name. It was in someone else's company name and everything was different. So we end up supplying a lot of HRT clinics. Wow. So where were you? So you basically are your own supplier.

Your HRT clinic is supplied by your pharmacy. Yes. Where is your pharmacy sourcing the raw materials? Okay. So the pharmacy just buys, you know, just like you buy our drugs from a distributor, a wholesaler. It's the same thing. They sell raw materials. They sell, you know, drugs that already manufactured.

There's some that just specialized in. that raw materials though. You know, like Purdue isn't selling oxycodone powder. Right. You know, they'll sell you the pill

made up, but they're not selling the raw powder. So you were, you were buying raw testosterone from a distributor. Was that coming from overseas? Yes. It's off from China.

Oh, wow. Okay. So was that legal? Is it legal to buy large quantity wholesale testosterone from China if you're a pharmacy?

Yeah. Okay. So we bought from the distributor here, which was legal. Yes, we had a DA license. The pharmacy had a DA license and a number. A DEA license? Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. When I bought this pharmacy, it was like a failing pharmacy, but I just needed a license right away. And so it saved me a lot of time and money. And the guy that had the license, let me use his license to still run the business for a while. So that's kind of helped me out a lot where I can keep it in his name and stuff. And yeah,

just right away being business. So you had, you were really doing well. The Stericline made about a million dollars a year. Yeah, it was doing good. Wow. And it was just easy. We had all of our friends working there. It was like probably 15 people, all the salespeople.

And, you know, it's easy. It just basically taking orders. Yeah. And you're selling a, you don't have to sell a medication. No, it sells itself. People want it, you know? It's like, yeah. They tell us what they want, and then they would get it.

And everybody's happy. Wow. It's so much better than selling street drugs. Yeah, it is. But you got to do it where, you know, because you're out in the open, cops are going to come there. they're going to purchase stuff and make sure it's done right. Did you have undercovers coming in, making buys, making sure you guys were following protocol?

Yeah. I mean, that was all online. The pain clinics, they did come in too. But oh, yeah, they were coming in and testing it out. Hey, guys, today's episode is brought to you by our longtime partner, Mood. If you're a fan of the show, you know Mood by now. They are America's number one online dispensary. I don't promote any product I don't stand behind.

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let's just Hauser the script. And they'd sign his name on it. They would call it Hausering. You know, they just thought it was funny, whatever. And they would just sign the doctor's name and then sent it to the pharmacy, and the pharmacy fills it.

So if they would have just done it where, you know, the doctor actually did their job, it's not illegal. There's still tons of those places around. There's more now than ever. And, you know, like I said, testosterone is a prescription drug. Yeah.

There's a need for it. So your brother was essentially forging scripts. Yeah. I see. Just to increase the amount you could source, right? Yeah. And that and it was, I don't know why he did it all the time, but also they'd give him too much. Like a patient shouldn't be able to call and ask for exactly what they want, like place an order and say, I want two bottles of this, three bottles of that.

You know, it's supposed to be decided by the doctor kind of. Right. But the doctor signs it. Like, it's really on them, not us. It's not us prescribing. It's a doctor prescribing it. Right. So the doctors either didn't review it or your brother signed for the doctors just to move

them through. Or the daughter didn't care. They just signed it. Yeah. That's a big shock coming from Florida that you would have less than ethical doctors. How did this turn into a federal bust, an investigation? The steroids or the pain? The steroids.

Well, the steroids kind of got wrapped up in the pain clinics. So when they shut us down for the pain clinics, like they shut down the steroid clinic the same day. They searched that office the same day. So it's all done at one time. Oh, so this ran for years. The steroid clinic was probably six years. Oh, wow.

Okay. Yeah. And so you made millions out of that. Yeah, it was a good business. Wow. What were you doing with this money? you were a young guy. You're in your early 20s?

Yeah. Early mid-20s. Yeah. Is your brother your twin? Yes, we're twins. Oh, wow. Okay. Gotcha.

So what were your ambitions? Were you taking this money and then building homes? Was that kind of how you were moving the profits? I bought a land with it. Building homes was for customers where they financed it. Yeah. But, you know, it was just to live off of and buy things, you know, cars and boats and houses and, you know, just live a good life. How did you know how to do?

was your father a good businessman, or how did you develop his business savvy so young? You know, I don't know. He was successful, but I learned a lot from his mistakes, too. He was good at what he did, but he wasn't the best. He was in the right time and the right place of a building in South Florida. I think me and my brother are having a twin were like always competing with each other. And that makes you better because it's like you're always in competition, no matter what you do. Like it's or sports or school, it doesn't matter anything. So I think just that competitiveness growing up, you know, helped us in the business world. Totally.

Were your parents proud of you when you had this, this, you know, growing steroid business? Yeah, they didn't know much about it, like how big it was. But they knew we were doing good. Like, they were happy. But we always did good. No, we're always doing something from a young age. So it wasn't really. Were they worried that you had a felony for selling steroids and now you're legally selling steroids?

Did you have problems from like a parole officer? Because you're kind of like you're on the map now, right? So was that a fine line to walk? It was, but I had a prescription. So I'm like, hey, I got a script for it now. You guys can't do anything. I mean, even in prison, when I was in jail for the steroids, I was on work release.

So I'd go out all day for work. I was doing steroids while I was in prison. That wasn't prescribed me, but I didn't care. I'm like, I'll still do them all in prison. And I was. But then when I got out, I knew I had to do, them, you know, find a different way because I'm beyond probation. Why were you using steroids?

Just so for working out, recreational purposes. The chicks? No, I like working out. It was like, if you're going to work out and why not take something that helps you get bigger? That's what the goal is. Did it do something to your nuts? We all want to know that. Does it shrink your nutsack?

What are the big myths around steroid use and abuse? Because I've heard compelling stories from bodybuilder friends of mine about how, you know, the propaganda around testosterone is really, really overhyped. Can you explain, like, the benefits to it and then the side effects of it? I mean, so when you're on steroids, you're injecting testosterone in you. So your body stops making it. So, yeah, your balls do get smaller. Makes your dick look bigger, though. Yeah, probably.

Yeah, it's an illusion. But so yeah, so they get smaller while you're on it. When you get off, though, then they go back to normal. So it's only really when you're on it that that happens. And I mean, I don't know if anyone really cares about having big balls anyways. I don't know. It doesn't seem like. Okay.

So beyond that, why do you think it's an illegal product? You know, why is it such that, you know, remember the Barry Bond scandal back in like, you know, 10 years ago? Yeah. Baseball, we found out all these guys were juicing. Found out all these guys in the NFL were juicing, obviously bodybuilders juicing. Why does the government care? Because it's cheating? But why is it cheating?

What are the other, could it cause cancer? You know, I've heard testosterone replacement therapy, which Joe Rogan talks about all the time. I've heard that maybe causes prostate cancer. Like, are you aware of anything deeper than just your ball sac shrinking? I mean, it does have an effect in your body. Like, I would get blood tests all the time. Okay.

Just to monitor what? happening with my body. And I think the main issue, like the main side effect is on your blood, your blood fat, your cholesterol. So it does, you know, lower your HDL and raise your LDL, which is not what you want. Your ratio gets worse. Total cholesterol goes up. So it's bad for your heart.

I see. And, you know, but when you get off, it all goes back to normal. But, you know, it probably does do a little damage while you're on it. That's why I don't do them anymore. because I've done them for, you know, 11 years. Yeah. And now I'm like, you know, I don't know. I'd rather not die too early.

So I'm just, I didn't want to keep on, you know, taking that chance. Okay, so it's a hard issue. That's the main thing. I see. Now, now, some steroids are bad for your liver, too. Okay. There's only a couple like that, but some are toxic on your liver. The ones I was doing really weren't, though.

Which are those? I'm like Winstrel, Diana Ball. Those are bad for your liver? They have us, like, 17 alkali chemical in there. and they're toss up on your liver, yeah. I see. Now, can you actually have permanent damage if you do them long enough or if you get off of them? Do you just go through a withdrawal cycle and then you're back to normal?

Permit damage on what? Well, your heart or your liver, depending on what you're doing. Not from my experience. You know, I got tested a lot. I mean, because I was so easy to get tested. I had the, you know, the clinics where I would just send in the request and do it. So it would always go back to normal. But, you know, if you're on it half the time, half your life, it's still a lot of years.

Yeah. Totally. So I might have six years of being on it. So that's why I decided to stop. Yeah. Okay. So you got off of it. Did you get out of it before all the legal trouble?

Or was it recently or going to prison? Is that what made you get off of it? Yeah. When I got in trouble for the pain clinics, that's when I got off the steroids. And since then I've just, you know, 11 years in prison, I didn't do them. And then when I got out, I haven't done them. Okay. And there are steroids in prison.

So it's like you can do them if you want. Wow. But I would not. I didn't do that. Yeah, so you made a killing off the steroids as a young man. You're building houses. Tell us about that. What year are you put like around?

What year did you start building homes? I mean, I was working for my dad when I was in college, you know, from basically 18 on. Yeah. And at like 21, I kind of started my own building company on the west coast of Florida. It was still under the same company name, but it was more like my separate company. So that was going good. You know, I built a lot of houses over there. And I was buying and sell on land a lot, too.

which is really where the money was at, was in the land. Especially back then in 03, 0, 405, where the land was going up doubling every six months. Wow. Wow. So that was just... Florida was booming. That was a great market, yeah. Why? Was that because everybody was moving from New York and the snow states?

Or why was it going up like that? You know, that always helps. But remember back then, it was just so easy to get mortgages. Like anybody... I would sell housing. These guys would be like, yeah, state an income. They were just saying, I make $300,000 a year. I'm like, no way you do.

but I don't care. Whatever, that's not on me. So it sounds like filling scripts, right? Like back then it was the Wild West in Florida. Like, yeah, 0% interest rate. And then the adjustable rate mortgages got everybody, you know, caught when the rates went up. Oh, yeah, yeah. So that raised the values a lot.

So when did you notice the turn coming? Was it 07 that you noticed the everything started to fall? You know, 70s people just stopped buying. So I still had houses. I was finishing up. but I was living on the west coast of Florida and I'm from the East Coast. And at that point, I moved back to the East Coast. I still ran the house as I was finishing.

But I started working at the steroid company then. You helped my brother with that. But I wanted to do something else. And we had a lot of ideas that we're talking about. And the pain clip was one of them. That's because a doctor was like, hey, you know, let's do this. Were your houses underwater, the ones you were building? Like, was your building company in trouble?

No. No, the building was fine because the house, the buyer finances it. So you didn't put your own money into these builds. Some of them I had a loan for, some spec homes maybe, but most of them were pre-sold. And the buyer got the construction loan. So they financed it. Now, yeah, a lot of them did default on their loan.

Yeah. Okay. So business just slowed down for you. For everyone there. Yeah. Just real estate construction died. Yeah. And I was like, well, that's okay.

The steroids are doing good. And then we'll just do some other stuff. Right. What was your goal? Did you have a long-term goal with all this money you were making from the steroids? Well, I mean, I made more building houses than the steroids with the land. Wow. So you're killing it.

You're a young millionaire for real at this time. Yeah, I had about $10 million in property when I was like 24, 25. And I thought that was going to be. I said, that's all I really need to live for a while. Of course. Are you kidding me? Yeah. It'd be worth 30 now.

Yeah, so I was kind of relying on that. I felt like, yeah, I'm pretty safe. I have all this land that's paid off. And this money is coming in from steroids. Yeah. So I can sell off land, you know, a couple lots here and there, 50 grand apiece. So yeah, I thought that was pretty much all I had to do. So this is purely greed and more money is why you chose to.

And by the way, I'm not judging at all. Okay. I'm just stating fact. That's the reason you chose to go into the pills. Well, I don't know. I want to keep making money. I want to do something. I enjoy doing that.

So, you know, starting something new like that. Like, I was in the medical field with the steroid company, but that wasn't like patients walking in the doors, you know, all online business. So I didn't mind doing anything. I would have done anything. That was just one of the things that came up. How did that opportunity present itself? That was the doctor that did the steroids for us, you know, was like, you know,

hey, I can prescribe pain medication to people that are in pain. And I'm just like, I mean, there's that many of them. Like, just that's all we're going to do. He goes, yeah, that's all we'll do. And I said, okay, well, I'll get an office. It didn't cost much. I ran an office for like $10,000, you know, with the first last security. I built it out myself, a simple little build out.

And we started that business. It's with that one doctor, me and my girlfriend at the time. And did he tell you what the pain pills were? Did he tell you these were opioids? He brought a bunch of pills with us. them like he had he'd order him from somewhere on under his license and had a bunch of bags of pills and it didn't they didn't matter to me i don't know what the hell they are i'm like all right whatever you know they're pain pills they're roxies mostly but to me that didn't mean anything

okay can you tell us the distinction tell us all of the different kinds of opioids uh that were being prescribed at the time so it's mostly oxycodone was like the base chemical and roxycoat They call them is an immediate release oxycodone pill. So they come 15, 30 milligrams. You have the oxy cotton, which is an extended release. And those come in, you know, 20, 40, 80 milligram pills. Okay. We did mostly the generic roxies because they were cheap.

And then with the immediate release ones, it less chance of someone's going to have an issue, an overdose. Because it's in and out of your body faster. So it ends up being a safer drug to prescribe. Wow. So that was what you pushed the most was Roxy's. Pretty much, yeah. I mean, some people come in there.

If they were getting oxies before, they might want that. But oxy was like three times a price per milligram. And most people, for the same drug, that doesn't make any sense. Unless they had insurance, which most don't. So we've become that, percocet, hydrocodones, you know, Laura set, Loratab. But it was mostly 90, probably 8%, you know, the roxies. And did all of those other ones percocet? the other medicines, the other pills, you shouldn't call them medicines,

but do they all have oxycodone as well? They do, yeah. Progosecate could be like a 5 or a 10 milligram. Then like the lower set, lower tab, or hydrocodone, which are not quite as strong. Memorial Day weekend is almost here, and it's time to kick off summer right. When I'm getting ready for the first big weekend of summer, total wine and more is my go-to, especially when I'm firing up the grill with family. I'll grab refreshing beers, easy drinking wines, and some hard seltzers for the cooler.

And with everything that goes into summer, it's nice knowing you're getting the lowest prices. Total Wine and More. Your Memorial Day, Made Easy. Shop total wine and more in store or online. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly must be 21. So how much did those costs, starting from the most expensive oxy cotton to roxies down to Perkocet? What did you retail them? What were your costs?

And then what did you retail them for? So let's say, like my main drugs, where the Ossicole and 30 milligrams. I could buy those from different wholesalers, from 30 cents to like 60 cents. You know, some just charge more and others, the smaller ones. And they sold for $2 to $3 a piece. And then you have stuff like, say Xanax, we'd pay $7 for Xanax. And you sell it for 40 cents. It's not like it's a huge number, but it's actually like $30 per person.

Valium's like three cents, our cost, we sell it for 30. So it's a great markup, just not a huge number on the benzos, the X and the Valium. But it was really the Roxy's that were, you make a lot of money per script. You're buying, you're buying each pill for how much? Say average of 50 cents. And selling them for like $15? No, $2. Oh, $2. I'm sorry.

Yeah. Okay. And then so you're really depending on volume now. The average person gets 200 of them. Oh, my God, at a time. Yeah. Holy shit. Okay.

Well, it sounds bad. As everybody says, like, oh, my God, you prescribed someone 500 pills. Some got 500 pills. But it's like, yeah, we prescribed them 530 milligrams. You could have prescribed them 150 160s of the Aussie Cotton, you know. It all matters how much drug they're getting. You know, people, so I don't look at the quantity. Like, the average is 200 pills.

Yeah, but they're only 30 milligrams, which is a lot, though. Right. So they're spending 400 bucks at a time. You do a little more because then they got. the Xanax and the val or the volume of course you got to wash them down somehow yeah well they need that for their anxiety so they can sleep better too you must have that pain gives you no other way to sleep that's what I hear must have that so somebody could spend five or six hundred bucks a shot uh say 500's the average yeah how how long does it take for a user to run through 200 pills 200 roxy pills so our

scripts were for um 30 days so say it's um say it's eight pills a day April's, yeah, eight pills a day, it's 240 a month. If they do six a day, it's 180. Those are the most common, 240 and 180. Okay. So you have, and did people, did you see people coming in before the 30 days were up? They try sometimes, yeah. And they'll be like, you know, either they go on a vacation, I need to get them sooner, or they lost their pills.

And at first we're like, okay, we'll just give you another strip then, whatever. Then we got kind of calling to, hey, listen, these people were probably lying to us. Yeah. let's try to make it so we're, you know, not going to get in trouble for this. So it's like, hey, if you get your pill stolen, just bring us a police report. And these people, they'll make police reports like nothing and bring it in. And if that's what they say and it's in a report, the doctor can legally prescribe more. If they need that medication, which they do, according to what the doctor says and what their MRI says, you know, we can do that.

So, or they'll say it got stolen, whatever. They have all kinds of stories. They make up. Right. You know, drug addicts are like that. They'll just say whatever they can to get more. Yes, correct. And anyway, they weren't all drug addicts.

Some really have pain. And some may have had pain in that maybe cause them to become a drug addict because they get addicted to it. Well, of course, a lot of people had pain. But, you know, if you go back and look at the history now of the Purdue family and the who was the other family, the Sackler family. Yeah. They over-prescribed. That was like their business model was like we were going to, you know, hire pretty girls just out of college to dump this on all of the doctors of America. And they knew how addictive it was.

They knew it was like a heroin addiction that these pills would lead people to. Did you know at the time when you first opened the pill clinic what these could do to people? Oh, no. I had no idea it would be, it would turn in than what it did turn into. Yeah. And I mean, I don't blame Purdue and all these other companies anyways. Now, they did push the drugs for doctors to prescribe. And they had a doctor saying it's like very low chance of being addicted to them, which that may have been wrong.

But I mean, I don't know. I feel like if people were in pain and they ask for this medication, like you should be able to prescribe it to them. That's what it's for. And it really does work. Well, I mean, look, methamphetamine works. heroin works. Seriously. Cocaine. I mean, these all ease pain. Now you can say it's emotional pain. You can say it's psychological pain, but these all work. So you don't, you don't, would you blame the Sinaloa cartel for El Chapo, Guzman? He had something called fentanyl back in 2014 and he was like, well, this is going to get people hooked. And he introduced it to the market. And that is really what. now we see the scourge of fentanyl. It wasn't like they were demanding fentanyl.

It's a product that was being pushed by all of these soldiers all over America. And it became a consumer demand. So you don't subscribe any blame to the Purdue. But a manufacturer, they can't push it on the patient. The doctor has to do that. They could try to push it on a doctor maybe, but. Well, they did push it on doctors.

That's the whole thing. Doctors were taking. Right. But they're the middleman. The kingpin, does the kingpin have no blame in any of this? I like to blame the person actually does something wrong. Not someone higher up like Purdue. Like I don't, on my case, one of my wholesalers got arrested.

I bought from, say, 10 different wholesalers. Each one will sell you, you know, 5,000 pounds a month per doctor or 10,000 or 20,000. So I had to buy from a lot. They arrested one of them because the smallest one, because he couldn't defend himself, I guess. And I don't think that's right. Like he didn't know what was going on in my office, whether it's legal or illegal. He just knows, hey, we have a license. They're requesting pain medication.

Who cares if it's all pain medication? We're a pain clinic. What else are we going to buy? You know, we're not treating people for anything else. So we're not just pain meds. So no, that's why I don't blame myself either. Like as the owner of the place, you hire a doctor who went to school for this, that trained for it. They see the patient.

You know, we don't see them. Purdue didn't see the patients. They don't know that, you know, patient-dother relationship. They weren't in the room. So I know what they didn't have been wrong in some ways, but I don't blame them too much. I blame the drug addicts. They got to take responsibility for this. Even if they're in pain, like physical pain, like some guy, some brick Mason hurt his back.

And the doctor, he goes to the doctor and he says, I need help. And he goes, oh, yeah, you want to take this roxy or take this oxy cotton. Yeah, but it's worth it. get out of pain. If you've ever been pain like that, like pain ruins your life anyways. Right. I've hurt my back before where it really does ruin your life. Yeah. That's true. That's true.

They always have the way the wrist benefit of it. Did you start to see as, you know, time goes on and clinics are getting busier. Did you see that your customers were looking more

like junkies, like traditional drug addicts? Not really. I mean, it was always the same people kind of. I think people that are in pain, for the most part, are more like blue-collar workers. Like, they're the ones that hurt themselves. It's not some working in an office for the most part. So it was always that socioeconomic group of people coming. And then we had all the people coming from like Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia.

Like, listen, they just look different than people in South Florida. Right. They dress a lot different. They don't care about appearance. Right. They don't care about teeth. Whatever. Right.

So they look different. different. But I mean, what am I to judge them based on our looks and say, wait, you probably don't need pain medication? Right. That wouldn't be right either. So these, so now you have people, now the oxies are spreading. It comes out around this time, the mid-2000s, that you can go to Florida and get as many pills as you need. So now you have drug dealers posing as pain, uh, pain victims, right? Pain patients coming down from all over. How, how, uh, what were they buying? Like, what percentage of your business do you think actually went to people who were turning them around and selling them on the black market? You know, I've thought about that a lot. And I'm like, how would I ever know? I won't.

But I can base it on, like, how many people died and how many people got arrested for it. And it's different. You know, you have people to abuse it and people that sell it and then people actually need it. And then some do a combination of all that. I think a lot of people may have been real legitimate ones. I don't know, possibly 25%. That's just a total guess. I mean, I would never know this.

But I'm just guessing based on what numbers I've seen on who got in trouble and stuff. But you saw people, but you could tell the people that weren't from Florida, people that were coming from out of state, it's likely that they were just going back and reselling them. how would people like that get prescriptions? They just go to a doctor or you had... Okay, so hold on, back up. So like how do people that drug dealers, people that are there to just get a bunch of pills stock up

and then go back and sell them on the street, how do they get, how do they buy from you? From your clinic. There's a few ways I could do it. One of me, obviously, they come in themselves. They say, hey, my back hurts. And then we'll go, okay, get it here, here, let's get an MRI at our place.

Most of the time something's wrong with their back. Just because if you're over like, you know, it's 25, 30, there's going to be something. Yeah. And you know what? Pain is subjective. Like, if it even sets a bulging disc and they say it hurts,

it really could hurt. Right. So doctors aren't able to say, hey, this isn't enough. It could be enough. You don't know. And then, you know, if you can get sued then for malpractice

if you don't do it. So, you know, you have to take their word for it. Right. That's the only way to treat someone with pain. Like, how do you know? There's no. you can't put them on a scale and tell how much pain they're in.

So if some guy says his back hurts and you can see that his back hurts, you give them 200 pills. You can't see if they're back hurts. Right. You have to trust them. Right, right. You can see an MRI,

but I mean, even that doesn't mean you're hurt, doesn't mean you're in pain. So the drug dealer, you get an MRI, it's going to show something most likely. And our MRI place that we used, there are some that, like, are, they don't show as much.

We had doctors that would almost always find something. And if that MRI probably didn't find something, we wouldn't use them. We're going to use them. If we're getting unremarkable results, whatever it was, then we were not going to use them that much. And we tell the patient

and we'd be like, hey, we have great news for you. They're like, what? We're like, you're not in pain. Here's your MRI. And you just see their faces just sink. We just mess with them when it comes to that. But they still could have been in pain, who knows. But so then someone come in and they get an MRI, they see the doctor, and they

get a prescription then. Now they can fill it at our in-house pharmacy at the office or they can go to like my pharmacy, like a standalone pharmacy, or they can go to wherever Walgreens, CVS, any other pharmacy. But you wanted to keep them, you wanted to try to do everything in-house because then you get the money for the doctor visit and you get the money from the sale of the pills, obviously. Exactly. Yeah. Now, there was a limit of how much pills we could buy so we couldn't fill every script. So that's why I open up the pharmacies and stuff like that. And I would hire more doctors when we didn't really need it just so I can use their DA to buy more. Their DEA license.

Yeah. Okay. Because we could buy it based on how many DEA license we had. Oh, okay. It's all per license. How much does one DEA license get you? Or how much did it get you? Um, a month, maybe 50 to 100,000 pills.

Okay. You know, but we have 30 doctors. So you had access to three million pills a month? We had a lot. I don't know what it was. It was a lot, though, yeah. Yeah.

30 times, 30 times 100,000. Yeah, we had a lot. Oh, yeah. And could you move three million pills a month? Yeah. I got charged with 21 million, 23 million pills in my indictment.

That was only one clinic. That was the big one, but that was just one. I got charged with that many. Wow. So you could move three million pills a month between how many clinics? Seven.

Seven clinics? Yeah. Wow. But now also we had, back to the drug dealer part, what they then would do somewhere from say Kentucky. And it's mostly people up north like that. They'd call them a sponsor. See, that one guy that has like a minivan that brings, you know, seven people with them. They drive them down.

And this is what we heard from some of the patients. They would pay the patients, you know, doctor visit fee and pay for their pills. And then they get half the pills and the patient gets half the pills. So that sponsor would get half of their, all their drugs. Right. And, I mean, it was so bad at one point where, now that comes to our window to pay. We had like five front window, you know, people.

And it would be like the sponsor coming up. We'd eventually say, listen, your financial advisor cannot pay for you. You've got to pay for yourself. Right. Because it looks bad when one guy's paying for everybody's drugs. Right. So where it's like, you know, we know the cost is probably watching. Right.

And even though it doesn't mean they're doing anything illegal, like we can't prove it's illegal. It still just looks bad. So we're trying to get to look better. You know, just. Like, hey, man, be a little subtle. Yeah, yeah, we'd do. So you have one guy drive up with a minivan of people and say, hey, I'm sponsoring all for all of these people that are also in pain? I'd be like, yeah, I'm paying for all these people here, yeah.

So how much could one caravan from Kentucky, let's say, how many pills could they leave with? Well, say the average got 200. So say they had maybe six people in those 1,200 pills. But then they go to like our other clinics too. And do they use fake IDs? or with a so you can you can sell at your other clinic to the same people that you just sold 1,200 pills over here to. Oh yeah. Legally or no?

Yeah, because there's no database back then. Oh, I see. Yeah, so we don't really know. And what am I going to do, try to cross-reference all these names? Like, that's not, I'm not a cop. I don't have to do that. That's not part of our job. So, yeah, they would go from clinic to clinic.

And there was other clinics eventually that opened up. There was a bunch of them. But, you know. Was there something special? about Florida in the laws that made it easier to do all of this than other states? Or why was Florida the epicenter of this business? I think the doctors down here are just more, you know, leaning it to write scripts. But then also, we didn't have the drug monitoring program like Kentucky has.

The what? A drug monitoring program. So, Kentucky, you go to one doctor, you can't go to any other doctors because they look it up in their database and I see it. Hey, your daughter shopping now. So Florida didn't have that. And they want to blame us for that. But for seven years, they tried to pass the law to get this program in place and the legislator denied it.

So it's like the state's fault, really. They want to blame us for it. It's their fault that people could doctor shop. But yeah, they go to other clinics. We don't know how many went like that. And then when we throw people out of our one clinic, our big one American pain, like say, let's say a doctor would say, oh, this guy, he did this. I don't want to see him no more.

we sent him to another clinic. All right, we don't want to lose the business. And one of them actually was undercover cop, where the cop said, hey, the doctor asked him, do you drink? He goes, yeah, I drink two beers a day. The doctor's like, listen, I can't prescribe to you because, you know, you might mix it with the pills and, you know, die. He's like, and I want you to die.

So he calls me in the room. It's all on video because undercover cops recording it. I happen to get called in that time for some reason. Usually it wasn't me as the manager. and I asked the guy and what's going on the doctors don't want to throw people out they want us to do it

because they don't want any problems so he's like listen I told the guy I told doctor I'm drinking but I'll stop drinking if I get the pills and I'm like that is that does sound right like hey listen he's drinking now

he's not on the pills if you're taking this medication he won't do the drinking but the doctor's like listen I don't want to do it I go that's fine we'll take him out I go here here's your money back

go to this other clinic I have because that he wasn't selling drugs, he wasn't abusing him. So it was like I couldn't legally send him somewhere else to get like a second opinion. Now we used to do it in our own office. We'd go from one doctor just to another doctor. But then they started getting mad at us. Like, dude, you're just saying him to this guy.

Some daughters care if they test positive for marijuana in their system. Because we drug test them. I see. Some doctors don't care. So it's like it's not illegal to do marijuana while you're on these. But it's their opinion. It's their license. They can do what they want.

So I want to make sure these people got their medication one way or another, especially for, unless they were doing something illegal, like, hey, we know you're selling drugs or, you know, you have all these track marks on your arm from doing them. So it sounds like you tried to, according to you, you tried to obey the law while at the same time retaining as many customers as you legally could. Yeah, exactly. I want to, you know, follow the law. And hey, if they abuse a system, you know, they, they, they, can do that. It's easy to abuse because you're not pain subjective. So they can easily get away with it. And that's not my job. I'm the owner of the club. I'm not the doctor. I'm not a cop. So if they do something wrong, it's not my fault. I don't want them to. I'd rather I'm just coming for really being in pain. But how am I going to know?

So how long after you open your first clinic with your first doctor, how long before it starts to expand? And did you notice that you're like, oh, this is going to be a profitable gig? So like the first clinic we had, like the first day we saw like six patients, which was a lot. You know, I didn't think it was going to be that many, you know, for a little while. It was like six. The next day was like 12. Then it went to like 20. Like it grew like exponentially so quick.

I mean, got out of control right away. And now looking back on, I know why because my first doctor I had. He worked there three weeks and he died. And this guy, he was, he did not care about following the law or anything. So back then, it didn't matter how old you were. We 18 come in there, even younger. Everybody's getting 240 pills was like the high limit. I mean, he would tell me to fill the pills in the morning and say,

hey, listen, just fill a bunch of 240 bottles of 30 million rocksies. So everybody's getting. And I'm like, all right, I'll do whatever. And so, yeah, they came with no MRI. they just said they're in pain and they got 240 pills. So he made it real, real easy. So we got... How did he end up dying?

A car accident. Okay. So right away, it's kind of like selling illegal drugs. You know, you tell one person, one Cokehead, here's my product, and they tell five people, and then their friends tell five people. They do. And then we tell them, hey, if you bring in a friend, we'll give you your visit for free next time. We did a lot of, like, promotional stuff like that, too. But yeah, he made it real easy.

You know, we didn't do drug testing back then. There was no MRIs. And everybody got, like, the highest amount you can get, like, that the manufacturer recommends. So that made it really take off from the start. And then after that, you know, I had another doctor that filled him right after him that I had lined up. How much could your doctors make writing these scripts? Well, this, the first doctor I had, we were 50-50 partners on the pain clinic. After he died, the other doctors, it was just like,

get paid per patient, say $75 per patient. I wasn't like a partner with him anymore. But he worked there three weeks. I know the third week that he worked there. He got paid $21,000. That was the profit, half the profit after three weeks. For the third week. Just for writing $75 scripts.

For $75, from $75 commissions. No, no, we were partners, 50. Oh, I see. Gotcha. With the first doctor. So we were already making $42,000 a week after three weeks. Holy shit. So yeah, it grew really quick fast.

So it's already a million dollar a year operation in the first month. And then I'm like, shit, the next doctor is I'm not going to pay you half the month. I'm just going to give you $10 per patient. Right. And then that way I made a lot more money. And they still make good money, though. Oh, yeah. And now they're incentivized to write as many scripts as possible.

Well, this is many people as possible. Of course, if they write too low as scripts, people aren't going to come back to them. But I didn't have that problem very often. These doctors, the way we would train them, we would train them with the existing patients and sit with one of our existing doctors and see what they do. And they pretty much follow what that doctor does. You know, so. So doctor was a profitable at this time, and the recession is in full swing or it's about to be in full swing. People need money, including doctors.

Doctor in South Florida at this time was like a profitable enterprise. It was like a growth business. business. Oh, yeah, because like it was a recession. The economy was real bad back then. But, you know, drugs, if it's for drugs, like drug use, never goes down. They find a way to get the money. And I mean, I had doctors that where I say one of them was past a surgeon, you know, where his business was so slow, he'd work for me twice a week. Wow. So a lot of them were just getting slow or need another job. They worked at a hospital making like $150, $150,000 a year, working long hours, doing like really complicated stuff. Right. This, you just see a patient and give them a script. It's a real easy job. It's great hours and then it's great pay because, you know, the doctors, the fastest ones would see 100 people a day. So they're making $75,000 a day.

Wow. So they're making $35,000 a week. As a side gig. No, no, that's full time, though. Okay. You know what? Our main dollars would see 100 a day. Now, some dollars might see 50 a day, the slower ones.

But, you know, they're still making, you know, almost $20,000 a week. So how much cash would one spot? pull in in a month? I mean, it's hard to say. I have to do the math on that. The biggest clinic would see 600 people a day. So, say, $3,000 a week. So it's almost $10,000 a month.

And, geez, bringing, I don't know, maybe $600 or $700 average per person with a visit. So, yeah, I mean, it was a lot. That was the biggest one. And then I had one I saw about 200 a day. And then a few that would see like 50 a day or 30 a day. So you're raking in millions a month. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, the profit was a couple million dollars, you know, a month. So this, to me, feels like how when I talk to people from the crack era, you know, black eyes from Harlem, it feels this same way. But with prescription pills, with opioids. it was an instant hit and the profits were more money than you knew what to do with. This sounds kind of similar. How many guys did you know or how many other operations did you think were like yours in the area in South Florida? At first, they're really none. I mean, dollars always have prescribed pain medication.

But like how we did it, not really anything like that. We made it real simple and we just specialized. It's coming every four weeks. you get pretty much the same pills. So we made it real easy. And that business model wasn't really around. But by the time we got shut down, there were hundreds of them. There was one popping up every week, it seemed like.

And they had said there was more pain clients than McDonald's in Broward County at one time. You know, that's what the news says. I guess it's true. But it was a lot. Did you get into actually making your own pills and then giving other competitors wholesale product? Okay. So, no, I did have my pharmacy that made the steroids. I was making pills also.

But I couldn't sell to other doctors. I had to just sell them at the pharmacy. So I wasn't a distributor. I was just the compounding pharmacy. So I couldn't sell other doctors, but we did make our own pills, which wasn't great because people don't want those a lot of times. They want the brand ones. They want the ones that A or the M on them, the blue ones like that.

You know, ours are a little bit different. but they were cheaper. So some people, hey, I'll pay a dollar pill for those. And those are probably more legitimate patients where, hey, I don't care who makes it. The same drug. It really was. Right. So we did make her own, but the best sellers were obviously the brand ones.

Okay, so where do the raw materials come from? Who is your re-up? Who is your supplier? I know you said you had multiple suppliers, but where, how do Roxy's, how does this huge industry, where does the manufacturing come from? Can you explain that, the supply chain? For the ones I made are the ones I bought that. No, I'm talking about the ones, the brand name pills.

Okay. So the main ones were Malincraud and Activists. Those are the manufacturers. Okay. Now, those are like, you know, worldwide companies. They're all over. I don't think they're based in the U.S. Right.

Pretty sure they're not. But they had plants here and they had plants, you know, overseas. So, you know, they buy the chemicals from China and they make them here. Okay. And then they make them and then sell them to distributors. and the distributors sell them to us. We don't ever buy from a manufacturer. I see.

They'll never sell to a doctor's office or a pharmacy. So you never had any ambitions to become distributors? Oh, yeah. Oh, I wanted to. Yeah, of course. Why am I not surprised? That's the easiest way to make money because they're just buying them and just selling them for a markup. Yeah.

But to get a license, to do that, it's really tough. And it takes a lot of time. So the one guy that got arrested on my case, I was in the process of going to buy his company. His distribution company. Yeah. We were in talks to do that. So I wanted that.

Then there was some other company. I offered him a ton of money. And they almost took it. I mean, offered them, God, it was over $10 million for their business. Wow.

And they just wouldn't do it. But the smaller one that I was trying to do, like he didn't know where to get the pills from. He wasn't set up with all these different manufacturers. So I had one of my other wholesalers. I said, listen, this guy at medical arts, he needs pills. Well, you guys sell him pills.

he's in selling to me. And they're like, yeah, sure. We'll sell to other distributors, and they are a distributor. Usually they sell to the end user. So I got him more pills than he could ever get. And he didn't know anything about limits or anything because he wasn't really in this business. I kind of found him just by research on the internet. And so then he was like, I was like, how many can I order?

He's like, well, what do you mean? How many do you need? I'm like, I don't know. I mean like 400 bottles or 500 bottles, like 100 pills per bottle? like 100 pills per bottle. He was like, yeah, that's no problem.

I'm like, really? Okay, I got like, you know, five doctors that's a lot of for.

He's like, yeah, that's no problem. And I was like, damn, this guy will just do anything. Everyone else has to limit. Yeah.

So he was, that's probably why he got arrested too. So could you have, could you have been, if you had got that distribution company, if they had sold to you, could you have had a distribution company

and maintained your retail clinics? Oh yeah, of course. Wow. Yeah, because I think if you'd be taking insurance or maybe some laws about that, but we didn't take insurance. So people like Purdue and the Sackler family, right?

These infamous, now infamous, you know, pharmaceutical giants, barons. Where did they fit in in the supply chain? Were they the distributors? They're manufacturers. So they themselves are manufacturers. Okay. Gotcha. Did you ever work with them?

I would never buy from a manufacturer. You would never know, right? You never knew. I didn't really buy their drugs much. Like everybody blames Purdue. These people weren't taking brand drugs from Purdue. They weren't taking Ossie Cotton. They were taking generics made by activists and Malincraught and then a few other smaller ones.

So they really weren't. It's like people blame it on them. They had little to do with what I did. What's the difference? What did they do? Well, their drugs were the brand. You know, it was expensive. It wasn't generic.

We bought all generics. Okay, got it. We didn't buy the brand stuff from, you know, Purdue. I see. Accy cotton. So just because it's too expensive. Three times the price per milligram.

Yeah. Right. And so you think that market was more for legitimate people, like retit, people that were in pain and they became addicts. But it's more expensive. So you're dealing with people that have insurance. Most times they had insurance. I don't know if it makes them more legitimate of a patient because I had insurance.

Oh. I don't know. Honestly, we didn't deal with it much. So you just dealt cash mostly, no insurance. Yeah, just cash, yeah. Okay. So, but you ended up not owning the distribution. I never got.

I was in the process. Just didn't get around to it yet. So at your height, so now you, and you also have your steroid clinic going at the time? Three of them at that time. Okay. I eventually had three. Wow. So what does the whole sum of your business interests look like around this time?

2007 to 2011? Towards the end, we had seven pain clinics, three steroid clinics. And then like a few like telemarketing places doing like credit repair and the mortgage. What else? That was pretty much. My brother ended up buying a strip club. You know, certainly. You have to.

And he started a massage parlor too. What's going on with your guys is scruples. Like did you ever, you don't seem like. you take a step back and think about morality much. Well, I mean, I don't think I did anything that was. I mean, morally wasn't wrong?

I don't know. But clearly there's no religion in your family. Not with me, no. And now if I was in my 20s, I would, and you said, hey, Mitchell, you're going to make enough cash to buy a strip club. I'm at that.

You know? So maybe things have changed now. but you didn't feel did your family, did you have any kind of like, did you feel any kind of way, or did your family feel any kind of way about this? Like, was there ever, were you ever looked on, did you start to be looked upon as a drug dealer

later on as it started to, there was a growing national outrage about what was happening? Well, my mom worked for me. And my mom would never do anything illegal. She's never got a tick in her life. driving ticket. So she thought it was all illegal, which, you know, it was, at least our part.

And, you know, my dad, it seemed legit. Everybody liked it. They thought it was legitimate. I rented an office from the investor of Price Line. And, you know, he's a very rich guy. Yeah. I went to his office from him. He looked at my business.

He came to my one that's existing. I looked at it. I was like, wow, this is great business. Yeah. And this is a real legitimate, like, successful business person. I guess legitimate's not the word. Ethical. There's a difference between legitimate and ethical.

I'm just asking, did anybody start to, before the law came down, before, you know, the investigation started, did anybody pause and say, yeah, I think this could like, I think this could really get out of hand. Was there any, were there any warning signs? Yeah. I mean, yeah, there was. But the way I looked at it is, no matter what happens, it's not going to be me that gets in trouble. Like, there was a time where the DA came in there and did an inspection. We were open for, from. about a year at that point. They came in there and told all the patients to leave, which they really shouldn't have done, but they did. They talked to the doctors, kind of like threatened them, saying that they're the highest prescribing doctors in the country.

Two of them self-sendentered their licenses. Oh, wow. No one got in trouble, though. And they talked to me. I talked to the head of the DA there, D.E. And they were like, oh, we need this guy's records for something that used to work here. And I'm like, I don't have them.

Well, we need them. Like, so what? They're not mine. They're his records. I keep me, he works for it. It's his license. I'm like, I'm not responsible for it. Am I?

So I know, whatever they do, that's on them. It's not you. I'm like, I know. I'm not worried about it. They're like, you shouldn't be. So the D.E.A kind of like told me, hey, listen, it's not you doing this. No matter what, if something was done wrong, it's a doctor. It's their license.

They see the patient and that kind of thing. So they kind of gave me more confidence that, you know, I could definitely do this and not worry. Now, I always knew they'd come out for doctors and send undercover. And, you know, I'm okay with that. If they did something wrong, the law was it has to be blatantly wrong. You can't just say, oh, we prescribed them a little bit too many pills. You got to prescribe like, you know, 5,000 pills. You got to give them extra scripts for money or for sex.

Like something blatantly illegal was the law. And it still is the law. You know, they overstepped it with this. And now that you've heard them in the news, the Supreme Court said, you know, you can't regulate doctors like this. It's not what the DA does. They're not like the Department of Health. And they started doing that thinking like they know what doctors just prescribed. Right.

When their own manual, it's just blatant legal stuff, not like what we were doing. Yeah. So when I had that manual in my office, I was like, the thing I lived by, I know every word in it. I'm like, all right, we're giving examples of what people did to get arrested. I'm like, we're definitely good. We don't do anything close to that. Right. So, I mean, I just based it off what they had in there.

I see. There was a controlled substance policy. Right. So then how did the criminal investigations actually start? What changed? I mean, nothing changed except for the government. You know, the drugs, people were getting a lot of drugs, obviously. People were dying a lot.

So it became more of a national thing where they're looking at this. And they're trying to find a way to stop it. They're arresting drug dealers all the time, whatever. But that doesn't stop, you know, these pills from getting prescribed by the doctors. So their way to stop this was go after the doctors. And they'd go out for some individual doctors here and there. But then they said, well, let's just go after the whole clinic itself. So mine was the first clinic to ever shut down and the owner get arrested.

Never did an owner ever get arrested before. I see. You know, because you're not really responsible for a doctor does. It does seem like the burden of proof is pretty high to, like, prove that this clinic was intentionally overprescribing, intentionally. you know, uh, helping people get addicted. Um, so did you know,

like, did you know when you were under investigation? Did you have, or did the, did the, the bus, did the raids all come as a surprise? Oh,

no, because we would see, we'd see the cops like, surveilling us all the time. One time I pulled in our parking lot and it's like, you know, you could tell it's an undercover car and all that stuff and it's running. So I had one of my,

my employees pulled their car in front of it, block him in so they couldn't leave. And I'm banging on the windows. Like, they wouldn't come out. And I'm then eventually, like, every cop in the city of Boka came. And, like, all, like, the lie up people. And I'm like, hey, what's this guy doing in my parking lot? Who is this?

Don't worry about it. I'm like, oh, is it a cop? They're like, we can't tell you. And I'm like, well, I want to know he's in my parking lot. I have a lot of money, a lot of medication here. Like, for my safety, I get to know it's my parking lot. And like, you better move his car. We're going to tow it and arrest them.

And eventually we just move the car and let him out. And every time we'd see him down the street. And we had this two-story office and a flat roof. And we were shooting them a slingshot. They were like a little bit down. We were breaking the one of those slingshot when they were in it. You know, we didn't really care. It's like we'd see him all the time.

And would you know when, could you tell when they sent undercovers in? Like was it pretty obvious? Or were they good at hiding it? No. I mean, I saw one of the other covers and kicked them out, like I said. And I wouldn't know. He did look like a more of a normal guy. And so for me, it seemed like he wasn't a dry act because he really wasn't.

he was a cop. But no, we have 500 people come in the office a day. Like, I'm not looking at these people. Like, I don't see hardly any of them. I'm in the back if I'm even there. Yeah. Like, I just don't have any interaction with them, really. Okay, so then what is the illegality?

How did they start building the case? What did they get on you? Walk us through that. Well, they, you know, they eventually tap my phones so they hear our conversations. And there wasn't anything. illegal said. Now, they'll use things I said like they're insensitive, people dying or laughing about it, but that's not illegal. There was never a conspiracy between me and a doctor recorded. Because it has to be me telling the doctor what to do. That's what I play guilty to. Is me telling them

the right certain scripts and this and that, which I didn't do. But I play guilty to it. Okay, so you're not allowed to, the owner of a clinic is not allowed to tell doctors to write scripts. That is, doctors are supposed to be completely autonomous. Yeah, and if you tell them and do something that's illegal, then it's conspiracy, right? It's an agreement to do something illegal. Right. So I never told them what to do. I mean, obviously, if they didn't do it, I'll just fire them.

You know, I had to do that probably one or two times. Wait, what do you mean? You had to fire doctors for what? If they didn't want to prescribe enough pills or be like just real hard on a patient. patients. Okay. You know, because people come there for pain. If you don't want to get pain medication, what are you doing there?

Like, we only specialize just pain medication. You don't do injections, no physical therapy, you know, nothing else. But if you're trying to run a clean company, you're kind of, you're kind of incriminating yourself here because you're saying we ran a clean company, but you would fire doctors for doing their due diligence and turning away patients. Yeah, but because when every other doctor does it and they see the the same patient and cut them back on pills, you know, it's why, why are you right and they're all wrong then? You know, it's all because they're taking $75 a commission. But if someone got

180 or 150 pills, like it's not like it's illegal one way or another. But so did the law ever get you, you say they never got you on a wiretap telling a doctor to write a script? No, or even saying I knew someone's coming in there that's abusing it or selling it. There's nothing like that. They were trying everything they could to get me. Then they searched the offices. They closed offices down, took all about records. They still really had nothing. That's why they didn't arrest everybody for like over a year. Okay. How long had the clinics been operating until the first bust? How much time had passed? Or the first raid, I guess. Over two years. Okay. So two years, you've already made millions of dollars. How much did you make in the first two years?

I don't know, a few million dollars. Easily, right? Yeah. Profit. Yeah. And you're growing. You've got your steroid business. Did you have ambitions to get out?

Like, what was your thought when the heat started coming down a little bit? You know, it became a real hassle to business. Like, because there were so, the cops are coming in the office all the time to get, like, records or whatever people got in trouble. And there were so many issues with the patience and stuff. Like, it was getting a little bit out of hand where I thought about, you know, what should I do? Should I get out of it? sell to the doctors maybe or just keep on expanding.

And I'm like, yeah, I just keep on expanding, I guess. You know, and just, why not? I mean,

I was going to open up a huge place in Atlanta, just closer to everybody where they were driving from. Because I remember 90-something percent of the patients came from out of state. Right. So I was going to rent some, like, big corporate office in Atlanta. I was like 200,000 square feet,

put an MRI, the pharmacy and have, like, its own parking lot. Like, it was going to be really nice. Yeah. Close to those cities, estates up there.

So I was back and forth. We're going to open up clinics in, you know, St. Louis also in Louisiana. It's hard to stop something when it's doing so good. And then it's like, you know what the law is? You're not breaking that law. So why stop? Did you get a lawyer at this time? Oh, I had lawyers the whole time.

Writing me up, you know, SOPs, standard operating procedures. I had them even on retainer. I'd go to lawyers and say, listen, you're not doing anything wrong. Don't worry about it. Yeah. You know, what do you, what's the issue? I go, I just want to make sure. Like, and they look at it and go, no, nothing's wrong here.

Did you present that when you went to court? Like, did you present, like, what the DEA? Did you document the time that they came in and said, oh, you're fine? Like, did you use any of that in your defense? I didn't go to trial, so I would have been trial, but I put out so I didn't get to defend myself like that. But, of course, I would have, yeah. Continuing on now, so you're two years in when they first raid and they demand to go through all your files and stuff.

They took all the files. Okay, they took all your files. Did you close that clinic down or how did it, what did you do about that? So they came in and closed, I don't know, I think four of them down at the same time in the steroid clinics, not even everyone, but the other claims we just, they all, everybody just quit. They're all scared. So they all quit. And then for like a month, like nothing happened. no one's getting arrested.

It's like, what's going on here? So I was like, well, screw this. I'll open up another clinic. So I did open up another clinic in Georgia, and I had still my same phone number. So it rings nonstop. So we just said, hey, American pain's up here now. That was the name of your company?

Yeah. American pain? Yeah, one of them, yeah. We moved it up to Georgia, and I hired three daughters right away, and, you know, started in business there. I did that for a couple months. eventually the police up there were just too hard.

They came in, scared the doctors and stuff. They didn't want to work no more. But it was good for a little bit. And it's like, why would I stop? So you could pick up, like a crack dealer picks up and moves to a new town and opens up shop in an abandoned building. I'm serious. This is how you operated your legitimate pain clinics.

That's wild. So you could go make a couple. You could go make half a million bucks in a few months. in a different market. Oh, it was real easy because I already had all the patients, too. Right. Plus, I know how it has to work. I know how to get the doctors.

I know, you know, I can set it up real easily. Are the laws different in Georgia, state to state? Like, are the laws different in Tennessee or Georgia than they were in Florida? I mean,

federal law, no. There's some state laws, but really, you know, payment medication is the same anywhere. Mm-hmm. There's no law on paymentication, like what you can prescribe, like how many?

The manufacturer has a recommendation. like a high limit. But you can prescribe more than that. You can do off-label dosing. So it's not like there's a set, it's black and white. Like if you do this, you're going to get in jail without many pills.

Unless it's like blatantly, you know, illegal conduct. Okay, but didn't you think it was weird that you were getting rated and phone tapped and picking up and moving around, you know, like a street dealer or like an illicit drug dealer? did you feel like, yeah, there's got to be something.

The feds don't just come after me to lose a case. So what was really happening? And let's just talk about that. Tell me what other evidence they gathered on you before you got indicted in the case to sent you to prison. So there's not like evidence on me. There's no like physical evidence or paperwork to show I did something wrong. What they did is, you know, they arrested and arrested 14 doctors.

they didn't even rest all of them. Some just get to walk free. I don't know for whatever reason. I guess they were great cooperators. But eventually the doctors cooperated, and any doctor that pled out in my case only had to pay out to like money laundering. I had to pay out to all the drugs and everything,

and all they gets money laundering. So they gave them this really great deal because they didn't want to fight the doctors in corks. They know they're going to lose. Oh, the feds knew they were going to lose to the doctors. Oh, yeah. Why? Why is that? Well, because they know they don't have anything.

They know they can always go. Hey, listen, it's my medical judgment, what to do here. Look at the law. Look at your manual. Right. I didn't do any of those things. So they just gave the doctors like, they just scared them and gave them like easy plea deals. They got two or three years on average.

You know. Well, that's a lot. If they, if doctors think they can actually win in court. Well, it's a lot better than facing life, though, in jail. So the ones that went to trial and the. federal case, there was two of them. And then they charge them with all kinds of murder charges, whatever, life sentences. So it's like nine murders on that one.

And the murder charges are from people that overdose. Yes. And the people that prescribed the drugs that killed them, those people are charged with murder. Yeah. And your brother was involved in one of those, right? Yeah. I'll just say the federal case, though, where I wasn't involved in the state or my

doctors weren't. They beat every one of those charges. The doctors did. They weren't found guilty any drug charges. So if they're not go through the prescribing drugs illegally, I'm definitely not, right? Because I didn't even prescribe them. They did. So that kind of exonerates

me here that they won. And me knowing they won, I know I definitely would have won too. The problem was they'll, for these daughters to get this sweet deal, like two years in jail, three years in jail, they got to say something about me. And so they're going to lie about me. And some of them

did say, oh, Chris told me I had to prescribe this. Really, the government just tells them, Hey, Chris told you to say this, right? Okay, yes, that's what you told me to say. They'll tell you what to say. You know, totally illegal, but that's what they do. So they were all testifying against me saying I told them a couple of them were anyways. I even had one call me before they got arrested, before we all got arrested and say,

Chris, listen, I need you to pay for my lawyer. If you don't pay for my lawyer, I'm going to have to say what they want me to say. That's not true. And I recorded them, too. I had a record in everything in conversation. I know you legally recorded them, but whatever. He was trying to extort me to get a lawyer or I'm going to lie and put you in jail. So that's the problem with like,

hang on, Chris, hang on. I got to scrutinize you here a little bit. If you say these doctors could easily beat their cases for prescribing pain medication, why one, why is two to three years for money laundering a sweetheart deal for them? If I can beat the feds in trial, I'm going to beat the feds and try. I'm going to take it to the box. I'm not going to plead out.

15 people pleading out. Hmm. And if they can beat their cases that easily, then why are they rolling over on you? Okay. Well, I understand your point. How you see it, but it's not actually right. So doctors usually aren't like,

they're not criminals. They don't want to fight the government, right? They don't want to risk going to jail for life. You lose one of those charges. You're in jail for life. Right. So you always have to weigh it out. They do, if I only get two years and I don't have to risk one of trial, and they know how the feds are.

They know how corrupt the whole system is where you're not getting a fair trial. You can go to jail if you're not guilty. So it's like, and that's what I worried about too is, hey, I don't, I didn't have to tell them to do anything illegal. They might just say it. What if the jury believes them? So you're saying these doctors pled out to money laundering charges. How is that money laundering? I agree with you there.

I don't see how a doctor. who's legally writing prescriptions and getting paid a commission is money laundering. Can you explain that a little bit more? That's what they charged them with. They said, hey, they had to give some charge that has a maximum of, like, say, five years, knowing that when you plea out, they cooperate to end up with like two or three years. So it's scary going through this where no one wants to go to trial. And it's not easy.

The trial is never easy. The trial they went to was two months long. That's like a serious trial. Right. And, you know, who wants to go through that? Hiring lawyers and risking your life on it. Like, if you can get away with a little bit of time not have to go through that, a lot of the daughters are pretty old anyways. They're, you know, they're not really going to be daughters much longer anyhow.

So, right. I wish they would have stuck it out and fought it because if they all did, I would definitely went the trial. Right. I'm just going to stand behind them as a listen. They all said he did everything right. And I'm just the owner. So, no way did anything wrong. Right.

But they're, um. How many of them got arrested? What year did that big? arrest go down. 2011. Okay. So first they arrested, they roped all these guys together. So it was over a year after they shut the offices down.

I see. After they shut the offices down, then they started talking to everybody, their attorneys, and saying, hey, come in and talk to us. I went and three times and talked to them. The prosecutor was one. I talked to me with the agents. So me and my lawyer went there three times to the office with them. And there's like 20 people in the room. And they want to scare me to taking a plea.

because they're like, listen, we want you to help us get to the doctors. We can't get to the doctors. I'm just like, you can't get to me either. What the hell? I mean? And I'm like, okay, we're going to show you what we have on you. And they started playing some of the phone taps, which they never do that. My lawyer is like, I've never had them play phone taps before someone's even arrested.

And one of them was like, my friend was like, one of the other pain clients was stealing our patients. He's like, oh, I went down there. I told them they're going to need a page up pretty soon if they keep coming over here. They're going to what? Sorry. Need pain management. Oh. And then there's another person that they hit by a train and they died and I'm laughing about it.

Or just saying they're, I said they're stupid by getting hit by a train because there's a bunch of, you know, lights and noises and that kind of thing. It is kind of stupid to get hit by a train. You got to be stupid. I mean, I still stay. Or you're deaf if you can't hear or see. But listen, I don't want them to die. They're my patients. They pay $500 a month.

I don't want them to die no matter what. Of course. Plus, I make a living off them. I don't want them all die. But they say. I'd say about a thousand of them I have died. A thousand of the people that you prescribed to died. Well, I mean, dude, you sold to, you can't even count how many people.

50,000 patients about. Yeah, and they sold it. And, you know, if we don't know about those. Three, fours of those were drug dealers, you don't know how many pills your operation affected. How many people were, you know, same with my weed that I used to sell. It's incalculable. Yeah, yeah, right. Tens of thousands of people.

And I didn't want them to die. But that, so they play those phone taps. one where, you know, someone of the office calls me and are like, oh, hey, this person died. And I'm like, I'm like, what was it? First visit or what was it?

A lot of times it's the first visit. Like, yeah, it's first visit. I'm laughing. Oh, you got to be tough to handle paying management. They couldn't handle paying management, I guess. You know, it was making a joke about something. I probably shouldn't joke about. But it's on my private phone,

talking to some of my office, whatever. Yeah. And so they play those for me. I'm like, that's what you got on me? I know they were having anything on me because I know what I did. And they're like, I'm talking. My lord's like,

oh, shut up, shut up. I'm like, no, screw this. Like, this is nothing. You got me just saying some stupid shit. This isn't the business being illegal. Yeah.

And they call me back again. I said, well, more evidence to show you. It was the same stuff. Not like, not the business. It was more like side stuff.

Mm-hmm. And then a third time, and the third time, I like, listen, we're going to arrest you if you don't cooperate. I'm like, well,

guess you guys are going to have to arrest me then. Because I'm not cooperating. What am I going to say? did this, it's illegal, because they wanted the doctor so bad. And I don't be wrong. Most people in the case cooperated right away. You know, but I wasn't going to do that. I'm like, I mean, I just didn't do anything wrong.

So I wasn't going to do that. And I wasn't going to lie about someone to put him in jail. I could never do that, which they all did. Most of them did. So is it, what are the charges? What are the charges against the doctors, the most serious charges? Well, if they pled out, all they got was money laundering. But what were they charged with?

Like, what is this big? That's it. Because pills, prescription pills, what DEA schedule classification are they? Are they Schedule 1 drugs? No, so Schedule 1, it has no medical purpose. You can't prescribe those. Schedule 2 is the highest that you can prescribe. Okay.

Which the oxycodone is scheduled 2. Say Xanax might be scheduled 4. Right. Same with steroids. And Roxy's would be scheduled 2. They're in oxycodone. Okay. Yeah.

And then are there minimums like with street drugs? You know, cocaine, it's like five kilos or more is like a minimum five years up to life. Are there the same sentencing guidelines with prescription pills? There is. Yeah, there's guidelines. The other states different, but the feds, there is certain numbers. But once you get over like 100,000, you're maxed out. Yeah, it's life.

So we had 23 million. I was maxed out way before that. So it didn't matter if it was 15 or 23, the same amount of time. How did they arrive at 20,000? million. That's how many they prescribed. Oh, so you tracked how many you prescribed? No, no. They counted them. How did they

calculate that? They just went through the charts in my office and added up all the scripts. Okay. Yeah, because you were keeping track of every sale. I kept all the records. I have every script. Yeah, every script. We keep a copy of it. Yeah. So, I mean, it's pretty easy for them. And so that was just one clinic? Yes. So they didn't, why didn't they choose to try to put

the other clinics in the indictment? Well, some other people got arrested, but they said, The amount of pills, they said, you know, what's the point of going these other clinics? There was just so many, so much, it didn't matter if it was a couple more million pills. It's just too much work, I guess. Right. Just try to keep it simple. Yeah.

Yeah, they have enough, they have everything they need with just one clinic. And it was the big clinic, American Pain, which is the big one. So, you know, that one saw more than all the other ones combined. And what was the minimum you were facing, the minimum sentencing on that dose, that amount, 23 million? So Roxy's don't Does it have a minimum mandatory Okay There wasn't a minimum mandatory on it

The maximum is life though When someone dies But there was no minimum on it Did they have any bodies on you Like how does your brother And what he was charged with Murder How did that affect

Did that affect you at all In your case? No, because that was a state charge It was one person that died From a clinic I really had anything to do with That you know The guy's sister

Worked in the state attorney's office So the guy ended up committing suicide. It was the medical examiner classified as a suicide because this guy's girlfriend broke up with him. He took half the pills and now he's dead. And now somehow my brother and the doctor are getting charged of murder. The doctor went to trial and beat it. My brother already plowed in the fed so he couldn't really fight the state case. But he's all that other stuff against him.

So he's pretty much stuck with doing the murder charge. I see. So your brother had already been convicted in the feds? Well, or he pled out. but he was already, I talked to them, like, he gave only information. Like, he was already, he couldn't turn around and fight them too. Okay. So was this part of, was he part of your indictment?

Or did you guys have separate cases? No. On the federal indictment, we're both on there. Okay. On his state case, it's just him. Okay. So tell us about how you finally, you refused to cooperate. There wasn't much to cooperate on you, you felt like you were being above board the whole time.

Oh, but I could have, I could have lied and said whatever they wanted me to say. Right. I know what they wanted me to say. What do they want you to say? I could easily done that and done probably two or three years in jail. What do they want you to say? That the doctors knew what they were doing. I knew they were drug addicts.

We didn't care about, you know, helping people out, just giving them many pills as possible, you know, things like that. Yeah. What if you had recorded them saying that? Could you have used that in your defense or is that illegal to record somebody like that? I mean, I was, when I talked to them, well. Did I record him? No, I didn't record him. It just sounds so, you know, it sounds, it's so dirty.

It's so dirty. You want to just get cops on that, but I don't know if that's admissible. I don't know if that would be admissible if you took it to court. Probably not, but the news would play it. It's such a war, but I don't have it. I wish I did, but they just, they're the biggest criminal organization there is in the country. The feds. Yeah.

I mean, they're the real criminals here. I actually agree with you. On a high level, I agree with you there. There may be some that aren't. I don't know. I never met one. It wasn't. Yeah.

You know, it's, you know, they really do think it was illegal. I'm not saying they don't think it's illegal. They're just wrong. They're trying to play doctor. The prosecutor is reading medical books. The law is actually blatantly illegal. You don't look at medical books to see what alternate treatments can be available. That's not for you to.

So that's the Department of Health issue. Right. And we had Department of Health issues, complaints from, you know, whatever pharmacies. would report us, we beat every single one of them for overprescribing. And that was actually based on like, you know, medical standards, which is not what the DA supposed to do. So we beat all those. And every doctor had multiple ones all the time.

I was paying lawyers all the time to fight it. And we beat every single one. So, I mean, there's just more and more evidence that this was not illegal. And of course, a jury after hearing a lopsided trial, you know, in favor of the government for two months, said it wasn't illegal. So what do you mean? You went? No, the doctors don't want the trial.

Oh, okay, right. So this business was not illegal. Right. And they won. Yeah. So you can't, it's not really just me saying it. So that's interesting. So it sounds like you had a good shot of winning.

If these doctors could have won. Almost guaranteed the win, yeah. Okay, so tell us about this. You refused to cooperate. How did the whole arrest and indictment go down? And what time frame is this? What year is this? Okay, so I met with them.

I got arrested in 2010. 10 and October 2010. After the third time meeting with them, I'm like, listen, I'm not going to, you know, cooperate with you guys. And they just said, all, fine, we're going to arrest you. We're done with you. Just like, that's what you have to do then, I guess. So they did the next week.

And they arrested me on a gun charge because I am a felon for the steroids and other stuff. And what other stuff are you felon for? I stole a cop motorcycle like a long. I was like 19. A cop motorcycle? Yeah. Man. I know, a dumb kid.

Dating you has got to be just one roller coaster after another. You're like, oh, and what else about your past, Chris? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like how much I was just sitting there, so I just took it. But whatever, 19-knit. Naturally. Stuff happens. So I'm a felon, so I can't have a gun at my house.

I never did. Like, I like shooting guns, like shotguns, like going to the range, and the trap and ski. We went one week and the gun broke. And I left it at my house to have some pickup and get it fixed. So it was there when the cops came. So they initially arrested me only a gun charge.

Because if they arrest me on the whole RICO case, the pain clinic, you know, I can go to have a speedy trial. And the feds is 70 days. They have to bring you to trial. And they want to get everybody to cooperate first

because they don't have a case yet. If they had a case, they would have arrested me for it. So they arrested for the gun charge. And I'm like, yeah, a big deal. I'll bond out. And then I'll get out. I'll fight this case.

I'm not too worried about it. Well, I've been arrested. it a lot, probably 15, 20 times in my life. You always get Bond. And this time, they didn't give me Bond for a simple gun charge, which I'm facing like 15 or 20 months on or something like that.

And that's just felon in possession of firearm? The reason I didn't get bond was because at the Bond hearing, the lead FBI agent said there was two undercover tapes or undercover wore a wire on me twice where I'm hiring him to kill a witness.

Which, obviously, I don't have those They didn't give me the tapes. But they're saying it to the judge. They're also saying I left the country, which I didn't do. They're saying all this stuff about me. I didn't do. Just lying. So the judge, of course, denies my bond.

I'm honestly, if I was saying, I would deny it too. They made me sound really bad. And I'm like, my lawyer is like, what the hell? You're on tape killing someone, hiring someone? I'm like, no, I didn't. The guy tried to get me to do it. I said, no. What if the judge had asked to hear those tapes?

The judge is a piece of shit. He doesn't care. Like, so would the prosecutor have gotten in trouble for lying? Could you have charged a prosecutor with, I guess you're not under oath, right? But, I mean, disbarred. That's so crazy. So we asked for the tapes because I'm like, so he dies by bonds, we appeal it. And I'm trying to get these tapes to finance.

I say, listen, this isn't true. The FBI delays it for like six months to get me the tapes. They're like, oh, it's in Texas getting enhanced. I'm like, I don't want the enhanced version. I want the original version of it. Yeah. Because I remember some guy that did wear wire on me. Do you recall, like, what conversation that could have been where you-

Exactly. Yes. Because now, what was it? Like, could you tell us the context when you were talking about killing an FBI agent? No, no, FBI, a witness in the case. Oh, okay. Can you tell us about that? Yeah.

So after we got shut down in March 2010, you know, people started cooperating. One of my best friends started cooperating. And I didn't know he was. He didn't work at the clinic. He worked like just on the side for us. And he knew I didn't like some people and like, you know, I probably wish they weren't alive. So he asked me about killing him.

And, um, you know, I was, it was twice. And I said no each time. Like, man, like, all this stuff's going on. Like, you're an idiot. Stop. Like, it's good. Who were these people? Who were these people that he suggested? One of them, he could kill.

One of them robbed me. Stole some money from me. From your house or from the clinic? From my house. Oh. And then another, I don't know. Let's just say that one for right now. Patreon folks That's where all

That's where all The truth comes out So yeah So he did try to get me to do it And I said no Why would your friend want these people killed for you Well he was just saying Give me 15 grand I'll do it

Right Because he was your best friend Well because he was worried about getting in trouble So he was trying to get him out of trouble His dad is an ex-D agent So his dad knows how the system works So his dad said hey Cooperate right away

Do whatever they want you to do do. So they said, of course, wear a wire on Chris. Jeff, my brother, they got enough on him. They don't need to wear a wire on him. So their main goal is to get me at this point. Yeah, so I asked for those tapes, took him six months to give it to us. When they gave us a tapes, it was, I think one tape. And it like cut off at some point. There was nothing about killing anybody. And they're like, oh, we just cut off. And it's just like, no, you guys cut off because you know I said no. So they're not to give me that part of the tape. We just, they don't have it no more. Mm-hmm.

So. And also, if they had tapes actually incriminating you to murder a witness, why aren't they charging you with that? Exactly. And what to play the tape in court then? Like, but that was the lead FBI agent on the case. Who got promoted for, you know, her work on this case. Mm-hmm. Who's just totally corrupt.

Yeah. What was I saying? So, yeah, that guy tried to get me to do that. Okay. So you're now in jail, but now they don't have to give you a speedy trial. So you're- Okay. So I appeal it.

I appeal my bond. I didn't get those tapes for six months. I appeal to the bond lasted like a month. So I wasn't able to get the discovery I needed. Yeah, you request discovery. It was to give it to you right away. But they wouldn't do it. And my lawyer just sucks.

He should have fought that, filed things to get it, you know, motion to compel it, whatever. They don't care. They get paid. They don't want to do their job no more. I don't know why. It would be good to beat them, but he didn't want to do his job. So that's why I got stuck in jail.

then they arrested me like over a year later with a superseding indictment for the RICO charges and all the other stuff for the pain clinics. At that point they had everybody, oh, they would come to the jail at that point before I got arrested for the RICO and say,

listen, we need you to cooperate against these doctors. This guy's telling on, he's saying this, this daughter's saying this. And I'm like, dude, they're liars. I don't care what they say.

I didn't tell them this stuff. You know, I'm on tape with your undercover. When the doctor sits down, I feel comfortable doing it, I say, hey, nothing I can do about that. I don't force him to do it.

you have the evidence how I interact with the doctors. I don't force them to do anything that I want to do. So then it came to the point where I'm filing these motions to suppress the phone taps and the search warrants.

Same kind of warrant, same facts. Because in those warrants, everything's a lie. 64 pages of total lies or just have truth or things have nothing to do with me, but make it seem like it's with me. I mean, saying things like,

you know, we have a tap your phone because we have no access to get to them. The undercover we had that was talking to him, which they did at some undercover or a CI, some guy ended up being a rat, some 60-something-year-old guy that I didn't know. I'm not talking to him no longer, so we need to get a wiretap.

I was talking to the guy still. They don't care. They just lie. So I filed the motions to suppress these warrants. No one ever wins those. No. No, everybody gets a wiretap suppressed, thrown out, but this one was going to happen.

And they followed their response to it, which is horrible saying like, oh, well, by us saying he wasn't talking to him, makes him look like a better person. Yeah, but that's your reason for getting a phone tap. And all the other crap you said that you left out, it's total crap. So how long were you in jail fighting the case?

Over a year. Okay. And we're during this time, they're trying to get you to rat. When do they give up on that and try to get you to plea? Well, pleading and writing is the same thing. Kind of the same thing. Yeah.

Plea out and Intel. Cooperate. What are you facing? What does your lawyer say you're facing? You're facing life, obviously. Well, yeah, I was going to face life. Yeah. Okay.

They said if I cooperate, we maxed out at 20 years. And so I'm fighting these warrants, and they file their response to my motion. And I'm getting ready to file a mine, which they know this is it. They're going to lose. If they lose those warrants, the whole case is done. Right. All the records they took my office, they'll get back to me. Can't use them against me.

So then they come and say, listen, here's how it's going to work. Your wife's pregnant, ready to have a kid. She's going to go to jail right now. Your mom's in a good jail right now with no bond. And your brother who's pleading out, that told us everything he did wrong,

isn't going to plea out, he's going to go to trial with you and get life. So if you don't plea out, they're all coming to jail, and your brother's going to jail for life for sure. And I'm just like, this is screwed up. It's like really stressful.

Yeah. So then eventually I'm like, all right, well, tell my lawyer, I'm like, listen, tell him fine, I'll plea out. So I went there, pleaded out or told them I'd plea out. And I was trying to get to where my, they could plea out first and I can renegle on it. And I'll play out. And they end up saying, no, no, you got a plea out before all them.

And I'm like, I can't do it then. I backed out of us unless I'm not plea out of trial. And there were just more things they were saying to do my brother and all my other family. And I'm just like, you know what? What did they have on your brother at this time? So, like, he did a lot of illegal stuff. Even at his pain clinics, like he has sold pills out the back door. like stole, you know, he did a lot of stuff.

Kind of like with the steroids. He was all the one. He was the more blatant cowboy one. He didn't mind breaking the law at all. He's like, why would I risk my business to break the law for a little bit of money? Like I had a legitimate business why I do that? He didn't care. So do you think your brother was the reason that the whole,

the Fed started coming down on you guys in the first place? No, because I sold the most pills. There's a number of pills that did it. Okay. And even at the end there, my brother wasn't allowed to talk to me while I was in jail at first because he's cooperating. I wasn't. They said, you can't talk to your brother.

Oh, so he was cooperating against the doctors. Well, not really. Maybe some of his daughters are work for him, not the ones that worked for me, really. And they eventually told him he can come to jail and visit me to get me to cooperate and plea out. So they said I'm in the jail. He's like, listen, you got to plea out. You know, they're going to screw me. And they put me in a bad spot where it's like, what am I going to do, fight this?

and I should win, but he's going to jail for life then. So then they said, okay, fine, let's Chris plea out. You're going to get 12 years. We're going to cut it in a half, so you're going to get six. On six, you serve like four. And I'm like, well, you know what? That's not horrible. It's a lot, but I've ever been here almost two years.

Yeah. I'm like, you know, and then my mom won't go to jail. She ended up going to jail for two years anyways. They told me she wouldn't if I pled out. So, yeah, they got me there again. So yeah, I thought I was doing it to help out everybody. Yeah. You know, my kid's mom and stuff.

Yeah. Was your kid's mom really pregnant at the time? Oh, she went to jail too. While she was pregnant? No, they let her have the kid first. Then went to jail. For what? Now, what did they get your mom and your baby mom before?

So they ended up charging up with like the money laundering, like wire fraud, like small charges. Nothing major because, you know, that was part of the deal was, you know, they shouldn't even get anything. At least my mom. My mom was a secretary there. Yeah. She had no, like, leadership. role in the case or anything. So it was just a real hard decision.

Hard decision in my life. Wow. Because you knew you could have beat it. Yeah. But if I beat it, I'm going to bring my brother down, get him life. So the feds were saying, if you take us to trial, we're going to ask for the maximum because we know we have your brother. Your brother's going to be found guilty.

So we're going to make sure, we're going to ask for life from the judge. Oh, yeah. And they said he's already, he's already cooperated with us. We can use the statements against him. Yeah. So he'll definitely lose. What, what, uh, did they have, how many pills had they charged him with? Millions.

It was millions. Yeah. Not as many as me. Not nearly as many. Yeah. But he was, he was the one they, did they have wiretaps of him actually ordering, doing illegal, uh, prescriptions? No.

So in my case, there was 35 people got arrested on my indictment. And I was the only one that had their phone tapped. I was the only one didn't get bond. I just got to screw it every way possible because they wanted me because always the main one I'm when I started this, yeah so they really wanted me

and if anything, go off of the daughters if you don't like what they're doing but no, they really wanted me more anything. So it sounds like you pled guilty to save your family. Yeah, it wasn't for me.

It didn't do me any good. Yeah. No, and I don't know if I'd do that again. I don't know. That'd be tough. Wow. Wow. So how much time did you end up?

I did 11 years. Off of a 13? 14. Wow. Wow. Did they seize your assets? Yeah. Yeah, they took over $10 million in cash, took houses, cars, boats. I got to keep, I had three houses, kept one house because I'd bought it with kind of money before the pain clinics. Yeah.

And some stuff I could keep because it was before the pain clinics. Right. Because you have money from your house business. business, your house building business. Okay. Yeah, but they take whatever they can, that's for sure. Wow. It's like they want that more than anything. Of course. Which is like, how does that make anything better? But they just want to, you know, hurt me as much as possible. The DEA is not out to make things better, dude. You know this. They're out to stay in business. Everybody's just trying to stay in business. I might think the FBI was lead agency in my case. And, you know, They came after me.

It was in a book that was written. The prosecutor said, after the agent told him, it was me that ran the clinics, said, oh, this young guy making all this money, keep on digging, is what they said. You don't investigate because someone's making money in their young, and I was a previous felon. That's not probable cause to investigate me. And that's what they said to an author in a book about me. So I didn't know that until afterwards, but it's like, that's not why you do this kind of thing. You go after crimes, not just like people.

but that's what they did in this case. I'm not going to lie, Chris. Half of this interview, I was pretty convinced of your culpability, but you've turned me. This really sounds like a dirty federal railroading. It's fucked up. Yeah, well, it definitely is.

There's not going to be wrong. People, the clinics weren't good for this country. No. They didn't help the country at all. But again, that's the people's choices that came there. Well, McDonald's franchises don't have. help the country. No, no.

They kill as many people as opioids do in the long term. Is Ford ever responsible if someone speeds in their car, doesn't want to seatbelt and dies or drinks and drives? They're not responsible when someone abuses their product. Just like I shouldn't be responsible if someone abuses the product that we sell. And there's products out there are cigarettes. They're almost guaranteed to kill you. They're allowed to sell those, though.

Yeah. Pills, these pills, if we took them as prescribed, you're not going to die. They don't kill you. Well, they're very addictive. That's the argument. I've taken pain pills, so I didn't get addicted. You know, there's, addictive is more of a more of your personality. Now, physically addictive is different than psychologically addictive.

If you take them for a while and you get off, you will have withdraws. But that's okay. I just, you know, part of the side effects. But an addiction, these people, if they're addicted to these, they're addicted to everything else. Coffee, cigarettes, other drugs. Those are just addictive people. And like you see now, they're not taking Roxy's. They're taking heroin.

Now it's fentanyl. More people die now by far than died when I was in business. But the argument, again, is that they were hooked originally by the pharmacies. And oxycodone's too expensive. And their habits get away from them. And so they turn to heroin and now fentanyl. Like, this is all, it all began with pharmacies in Florida like yours. That's, that's the narrative.

That's probably true. you know, that's why but there's people that are in pain that need this medication. Like I have people, family members, that need it. Like my stepdad was a patient of mine. He had his knees replaced, his shoulders replaced. He was a legitimate patient.

Now he can't get pain medication like he used to. And now he suffers because of it. He's miserable. Like, it sucks for him. It sucks for my mom now. So they're hurting a lot of legitimate patients now. People complain to me all the time. I can't get pills because of you.

Daughters don't want to prescribe it. Daughters should not be scared of the, DEA. Their policy says that too. The other should not fear prosecution from the DEA. Right. Like you just... I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. You're your best medical judgment and do it. You'll be fine. Well, how did

the laws change because of cases like yours? Like, what's the situation now in Florida? What do you need to do if you have to... How do they clamp down on that business? So the biggest way he did it is is by fear. Dollars don't prescribe it. Wholesers won't sell you

10,000, 20,000 pills a month. probably won't sell you hardly any. But if you're a new place, they're not doing it. But then there are laws like the drug monitoring program where they can track, you know, what pills you get. There's a database now. Yes. So you can't doubt their shop. The clinic owner now has to be owned by a doctor.

It can't be owned by someone like me. You have to do more like drug testing stuff, which we did anyways. You have to have MRIs, thing like that. We did all that stuff. So it's not really they changed a whole lot. It's really that people are skis. Well, I think the database is a huge one because now it makes it a lot sketchier for out-of-towners who are obviously just taking it back to their markets and selling them on the street. Makes it harder for them.

So when I first started, I got this business too. When I first started, I got these people from, you know, Kentucky and Tennessee all the time. Now I was like, it's kind of weird. And why are they coming this far? They were like, hey, my daughter got shut down. You know, we can't get the medication here. I'm like, okay, well, if you're really in pain, you would travel far, right? People travel far for plastic surgery.

That's not even necessary. And they go to Columbia. They go all different places for it. So I'm okay with them coming here. And after being over for three months, the Department of Health came into an inspection. And they saw my charts and they saw these out of state people. They're like, why do they come from out of state? I'm like, I don't know.

Should I ask them? They're like, well, I mean, just wondering why. It looks weird. I'm like, what do I care where they come from? I don't know if they even live here and they just still have their idea, but I don't know. I don't ask him that. I go, is it illegal? The part of all said, no, not illegal.

I go, it's a prescription. The amounts to be right illegal. Nope. They said, we investigate anything over 300 pills. I'm okay, we don't have many over 300. This is the department about told me. So then what I did is on my questionnaire when the patient comes in, I'd have them fill out why they're coming to Florida if they're from out of state.

Just so when these assholes ask me, hey, why they come so far? Well, look at the chart. That's the way he told me. I don't know if it's true. I'm not going to investigate a patient. It's not my job. I think you were made an example of. I think you probably could have gone to the trial and beat it.

I mean, you've got the health inspectors saying that you followed the rules. You had the DEA come in and talk to you before you were ever under investigation. Plus, you have all these sketchy, corrupt things that the FBI was doing. I could beat them just on that, just on all the illegal stuff they did. No one's a big word they say and throw the case out. Yeah. It wouldn't even got the trial. Yeah.

I would have beat the warrants in one. But does your daughter feel bad? Does your brother feel bad knowing that you effectively took 12 years for him to save him? I don't know. I didn't ask him. Probably not. I don't know, though. I mean.

Does your mom feel bad? Did it hurt your relationship with your family? No. They don't really talk about it. I don't know. We don't want to talk about that. Do you, was there any kind of, are you guys close still? Yeah.

I talked to my brother sometimes, yeah, and my family were all close. Yeah. But I think you were the first, you were one of the, like, early adopters of a technology or of a new industry that, for sure, is now controlled by, you know, gigantic Wall Street traded firms. that still get people addicted, but you were a freelancer, and they don't like that. Just like this guy I talked to on the show recently,

he was a Bitcoin guy, and he developed an app, a technology where you could have paid for things using Bitcoin. It was like a touchscreen technology. Now, they told investors that they had it. They had it, they told them their investors

that they developed the technology. already. They hadn't. He was on a Netflix documentary, Bitcoin. He told investors that he had this technology made already. He didn't. But by the end, after working with programmers and, you know, all of these tech people, they had actually, he told me that they had actually developed his app.

But by then it was too late. And then he got all of his assets seized and taken to prison. But now, of course, a Wall Street firm, you know, the giants own that technology. now and it's okay that they use it because they're part of the system, right? So I think that's, I think you were just the unfortunate timing of history and a victim of the politics. And Florida is just the sketchiest most corrupt state in the history of states. So that didn't help either. But it's also what allowed you to make millions of dollars. They didn't like me and my brother. You know, I've been in a lot of trouble growing up. So they were after me and my brother from a real

young age. So that probably made it worse. Yeah. You had a rap sheet. Yeah. I just we caused a lot of problems with them. So yeah, they wanted to get us just for that reason. On top of that, yeah, the pain clinics were the biggest ones.

So they figure, hey, how do you slow this down? You stop them. And they can come in there and shut you down, take all your stuff and not even arrest you. Well, that slows down, you know, pills getting out on the street. Yeah. And they have no evidence of anything. Did they take down other groups like you, like other operators? Afterwards, yes, not many, but there's been a few. Were you, was this in the news? Was this like a big deal?

Oh, yeah, it's been in news a lot, a lot of documentaries. Yeah, yeah. It was a, I mean, it's a big story, I guess. Did you have, when did you, you know, you've been on National Geographic, you've been on, you did a CNN piece? Were they reaching out to you while you were still in prison, like saying, hey, we want a document? you meant this. Some were and somewhere after, but yeah, it's a combination. Yeah, because I think, you know, talking about, I mean, you know, exposing some of the corruption in the FBI could be helpful.

You know, if you have names and maybe it won't come of anything, right? Look, we see how corrupt the FBI is with the Trump trials. No one's going to do anything to them. So it's like, yeah. The judge should oversee this stuff. Like, the judge saw what I found about the warrants. He should have saw that way. Well, hold on.

Is this stuff true? Like, don't let this guy play out. But the judge, he really thinks it's wrong too. Even though he knows what's happened in trial, he still just thinks it's just so wrong and that, you know, people died. It's not because of us, they died. It's because of the choices they made. You know, but they're still, we can win,

doctors can win in trial and they still think it's illegal. Yeah, so I don't know, there's no way to hold them really accountable for it. Yeah, I mean, look, it's, we see what they're doing. with the Trump trials. We see how dirty they are with tapping his campaign with Obama. It's like they're completely out of control and now they're just

giving everybody the finger. They're not even trying to hide it anymore. And if they do something like that with him, can imagine us little guys. Yeah. I think they go away with anything with us. No, it's bad. It's bad. I don't know what can be done about it, but... Yeah, I mean, I think the culture has to change

and in a place like Florida, this is the problem with not having law and order is because the government, if the government won't obey their own laws and procedures, then the rest of the society, you could see how quickly it all unravels, right? Yeah, I asked the de-agent one time, after I already put out,

I said, so, I said, you know I would have beat these warrants. I said, it's all lies in there. He laughed and was like, oh, just half-truths. And half truth is a lie, basically. Any admission is still like wrong. It was lies too. They admitted it was that they laughed about it. Like, yeah, so what, we got you.

Whatever it takes. And it's justified the means, I guess. That's right. And that's all they cared about. But it won't happen again. They can try to arrest me again and I will definitely go to trial. I don't give a shit. Who has to go down with me?

Well, why would they arrest you now? Tell us about you've been out. You got out in 2021. Your home building again. What is your life now? I don't think they would have. arrest me for anything right now, but I didn't think they arrest me before either. Yeah, but you're not selling millions of pills a month. Are you? No. I don't say it here. No, but you kind of lose all

faith in the system after this happens. So I don't know what they can make. Actually, you know what? I'll give you an example. I went to some city council meetings. Some wife there, her husband ripped me off for some money. And I had a cop read a whole eight page report, single space, all kinds of lies in it about me stalking this lady and casing the building going around it, getting back up from the parking lot, all this stuff. I had to go to court and defend myself for a stalking case.

And I represented myself because lawyers suck and totally beat the case. The judge threw it out halfway through. And I went to Internal Affairs and said, here, I'm going to show you a lies. This cop said he watched the tapes here. Oh, in court, I didn't watch tapes because the tapes would show I didn't do anything.

And all the lies, turn to fight, well, I mean, he watched some but not. He says he watched all the tapes. It's like they don't police themselves. So I could have got arrested for that. I didn't do a damn thing wrong. I went to a city council meeting twice. Why could you have got arrested?

Oh, for the stalking. Yeah. It was civil at that point. It was a restraining order. Right. But it can also be criminal. The same thing. Have they tried?

Because you're still on parole. Yeah. How much longer do you have? You go off in February. So, I don't know, 10 months. Okay. So do you, have you noticed them follow them? you or investigating you at all since you've been out?

No, but I probably wouldn't notice them anyways because they'll blend in. So what are you doing? Your business is just you're back to building homes and flipping land. I do everything. It's totally illegal. I should not have anything to worry about. But, you know, like this restraining war thing. You know, something come up like that and they'll lie about me.

And, I mean, the judge actually said she couldn't believe a word this cop says, this case is a travesty. She never gotten this far. And that the cop's totally incredible. She says all this in court. Like, it's all out there. And so anything, I'm worried about something of stupid like that happening. Not my business. Right, right.

That would be hard to say it would be illegal. I'd be a real stretch for even them. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry that happened to you. I think your personality and the fact that you were not contrite at all about the, obvious addiction that your Mills caused, I think that probably motivated them to do anything they could, right? Just like Trump, they don't like his personality, so they'll break the law to try to incarcerate him and make sure he doesn't win again. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's if we live in a free

country, if we live in a democracy where law and order law is above everything. Yeah. That's all that matters is what you can prove and what the law is. What the law is. And I feel bad about that, man. And I'm sorry that happened to you. Well, thanks. And as you said, you can't legislate morality. There's no prison for morality. Right.

Right. If there was, maybe I'd go there. But there is not. We don't have that here. Yeah. It's, you know, you've got to break the law to go to prison. Mm-hmm. It's supposed to be like that.

Yeah. Do you have anything you want to plug? Do you want to, or anything, you know, before we get out of here? Oh, we're almost done? Yeah. We're going to switch over to Patreon. Okay. Gov over to Patreon?

Like, you don't have a podcast, thank God. You didn't even know what a podcast was, but you did great. You did great for your first time, man. You killed it. Where can they find, like, the episodes you've been on, like the National Geographic and these series that they've done on you? Just online is Google on my name, Chris George. Yeah, Chris George.

You know, can we plug your home building business? What are you looking for? Are you looking for investor capital? Are you looking for land to buy? I can always use money if someone wants to give me some money to invest. Yeah. Okay. Maybe me.

I got a guy. I got a couple of wise guys down there in South Florida. You should talk to. Yeah. Yeah. You know, money guys. All right. That won't get you any trouble though.

These guys are, these guys are clean now. Well, thank you, man. I really, really appreciate sharing your story and the candidness. Right. So, you know.

Yeah, it's unfortunate, but I think you've got enough of a business savvy mind that you'll make millions again. You know? Yeah. Yeah. No. Do you have regrets from that era? I mean, only because I went to jail for it. I wouldn't do it because of that.

But, you know, if I didn't do it, someone else is going to do it anyways. So I don't feel like if I wasn't around, the country's going to be better off. but it'd be hard to do I mean I would like to do it and go to trial and just win because I'd feel really good I know that feeling you're like I want to commit another crime get arrested just so I can beat him at trial I want them to do something arrest me like false like this again

one of my greatest fantasies is beating the feds in trial yeah like I picture I used to picture that in my mind like how I would react getting a not guilty verdict like I would like show my balls to the DA I would make kissing noises at them you know what I mean I would, I'd grab her by the hair and kiss her on the mouth, you know, there was a female. Like it was, it's one of the convict's greatest fantasies. What he just thinks it's pace.

I used to pace in my cell thinking about how I would, yeah, beat this case again if I could have done a different. Yeah, I definitely wish I could have gone that route. And I did it. The restraining order case, I kind of did it there. I mean, it's a smaller level, but, you know, I got to cross exam on a top for like two hours. and make him look stupid. You might have been a good lawyer. I think I would have been.

Yeah. Just I did a great job and I did do a great job. I mean, he dropped it halfway through. I can't even call my well witnesses. Judge is like, this is over. Yeah. We're not going anymore. So yeah, it feels good.

But he's a cop where I live at. So, you know, it's probably not good pissing them off too much, but I just got to make sure I'm doing everything right. So if I do come after me, I at least have a good defense. I can defend myself. Yeah. Florida's sketchy folks. Don't mess with it.

Chris George, thank you so much, buddy. Patreon.com slash the Connect show. We're going to talk to you a little bit more. Thank you so much for coming out of here, man. Killer, killer episode. Take care, guys.