All language subtitles for FBI True Season - 5 episode 4

- This was
the largest investigation

of its type in U.S. history.

The local police departments
in South Florida

came to us and said,
we're doing car stops

and finding people who are
obviously under the influence

with massive quantities
of pills,

with pill bottles
with their names on it.

And we'd get reports that
people were dying of overdose.

Then you see pain clinics
on every corner.

Then you see the addicts
traveling to Florida

for exactly that reason.

We started to suspect
there might be

a trafficking operation here.

We could not attack
every single one

of these clinics at one time.

You go to the biggest, baddest
distributor on the block,

and that's who you focus on.

We start off with surveillance.

And then we eventually
introduce undercover agents.

- The doctors only cared
about making money

and expanding their operation.

People are dying.

It was a great deal of urgency
to gather the evidence

and shut all of this down.

- In the FBI, we make
a lot of headlines.

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Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people
want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze!
- FBI.

- FBI!
- Action!

- But they don't know
the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking
agent-to-agent.

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This is "FBI True."

- Kurt, how is it that
you came upon this case?

- Kristy Kottis is
a 24-year veteran of the FBI.

She worked gangs,
crimes against children,

as well as human
and drug trafficking.

- So back in 2008, my partner
Jennifer Turner and I

were actually assigned
to a task force office

focusing on the South Florida
organized crime.

So it's local PD and FBI agents
and other federal agencies.

And it was literally
water cooler talk.

When my partner was first
talking to our local partners,

they were mentioning that
they were stopping cars

with people
with huge volumes of pills,

and they were occasionally
finding people overdosed

on the streets
and in local motels.

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We had started
to hear rumblings

about an increasing number
of deaths

from different parts
of the country.

Law enforcement officers
would call in

about these dead people
that they found

with prescription pill bottles
on them.

- Kurt McKenzie is
a 23-year veteran of the FBI.

He started his FBI career
as a forensic biologist

before working transnational
organized crime, narcotics,

and health care fraud.

- It was technically
legal for them

to possess these vast
quantities of narcotics

because everybody
had a prescription.

So we weren't exactly sure
what we were looking at,

but we knew something
was wrong here,

and something had to be done.

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- So you find out
that these are

doctors working in a clinic.
- Yes.

- So what's the next step?
Everything's legal.

Where do we begin on this?

- I actually came to the FBI

from the
pharmaceutical industry,

so I understood a little bit
about the things

that we were dealing with
in this case.

So one of the first things
we did was talk to the DEA.

The DEA maintains
a system called ARCOS.

So ARCOS is a database
that contains information

about every single
opioid dose manufactured

in the United States, from
manufacturer to the pharmacy.

One of the things we found out
is that in 2008,

more than 90% of all
the oxycodone manufactured

in the entire United States
was shipped to Florida.

- Wow.

- At that time,
Florida did not have

a prescription drug
monitoring program.

So in other words, if you were
to go to a doctor in Florida

and get a prescription
for a narcotic,

you could then go right down
the street to another doctor

and get another prescription
for a narcotic

and continue that all day long.

- You do surveillance
on these clinics.

What are you guys seeing?

- You see lines going
all the way down the street...

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Of people who look like
they're under the influence.

- When you say clinic,
like a doctor's office, or--

- They had doctors.
They had licenses.

They would advertise that
they were pain clinics.

They would help you
with chronic pain.

So in 2008,
in Broward County, Florida,

the greater
Fort Lauderdale area,

there were more pain clinics

than there were
McDonald's restaurants,

literally--well over
100 pain clinics

in South Florida at this time.

- It's unbelievable.

- At that time in Florida,

oxycodone was
the number one cause

of overdose death in the state,

above heroin, above cocaine,
above alcohol, oxycodone.

So we started
to realize we had

a very significant problem

that was bubbling up
underneath this investigation.

- Kurt, tell me what happened
when you brought these

to the prosecutor's office.

- We would explain
the volume of pills

that we saw being moved.

We would talk
about the activity

that we saw at the clinics.

But we were not met with
a great deal of enthusiasm,

because on its face,
this activity is all legal.

Every doctor has a DEA license.

The clinics are appropriately
licensed by the state.

- All these drugs that
you were talking about,

they're all legal.
- Correct.

All manufactured
in the United States

by established
pharmaceutical companies

and transported
to South Florida,

which obviously is concerning
to a prosecutor.

Because you wanna come
to them with obvious law

that's being broken,
and we did not have that here.

- And how frustrating was that?

- It was frustrating,
but it was more of a challenge.

We weren't gonna
let that stop us.

We have to show that what's
happening in these clinics

is outrageous,
and that the volume

is indicative of something
illegal happening

here at these facilities.

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We understand that
they're operating

a surface operation here,
but your gut

tells you something's wrong.

So once you send
in the undercovers

is when you really start to see
what's happening in the clinic.

And it doesn't look like
any medical facility

you or I have ever been to.
It looks like the DMV.

There are just
wall to wall people.

You have people wearing shirts
that say security

like you're in a nightclub.

Bouncers in a clinic.

- We send an undercover
in who met with a doctor

for his "examination."

- The undercover
told the doctor

that he would drink
the occasional beer

after he took these pills.

- The doctor says,
I'm a little concerned.

I don't know if I wanna
give you these drugs.

- The doctor tells
the undercover,

well, I have to call in
my expert.

- The doctor seems like
he's doing the right thing,

and then in walks Chris George,
the owner of the clinic.

Why is he being summoned?

- And that's when, for us,
things got really interesting.

- The owner of the clinic,

who has no medical training
whatsoever,

that's who the doctor was
calling his "expert."

- He sent him to his
overflow facility,

basically, for the people
who are in really bad shape.

Those doctors would ask
even fewer questions.

- And then our undercover
got a prescription

from the other clinic
as if nothing had happened.

Of all the pain clinics
in South Florida,

the most prolific
were five locations

owned by Chris George and his
twin brother, Jeff George.

They had their own pharmacy.

- When we started
doing a deeper dive,

we realized that five
of the doctors who worked

for the George brothers
prescribed

more oxycodone
than every single doctor

in the entire state
of California that year.

So we started to
suspect there might be

a trafficking operation here.

We decided to make the
biggest splash where we could.

You cut off the head
of the snake.

You go to the biggest, baddest
distributor on the block,

and that's who you focus on,
and that's what we did.

- And that's
the George brothers.

- And that was
the George brothers.

- What are you
learning about them?

- They are shrewd businessman.

They're working to make
these facilities operate

as efficiently as possible

so they can push
as much narcotics

as they possibly can.

Avid bodybuilders.

They like to drive fancy cars.

You'd see the cars
pull up to the clinic.

Chris had this
ginormous monster truck.

They were buying yachts,
fancy houses.

They were living the high life.

- Were they always in the
medical service industry,

or did they do other things?

- Neither brother
had a college degree,

a medical degree,
or anything like that.

Chris was a convicted felon.

So he knew that by law
he could not have his name

on a medical facility,
so he had the names of friends

on the clinic's paperwork.

Chris never hired
a single medical professional

outside of the doctors.

So everybody who worked there
were friends and family.

And the criteria
for working there

if you're a female was,
you had to be pretty.

So there are a handful
of strippers working

in these facilities as well.

As a matter of fact,
Chris's girlfriend at the time

was also an exotic dancer.

He put her in charge
of one of the clinics,

his overflow facility.

- What did you find was
the preferred method

to get their dosage
of pain meds?

- Cash.

Most clinics, most health
care facilities you go to,

they ask you for insurance,
maybe a credit card.

Not this place--every single
transaction was straight cash,

another red flag.

- And what kind of narcotics
are you seeing?

- It's what we call
the cocktail,

so it was a combination of
oxycodone, 30 milligram pills,

oxycodone, 15 milligram pills,
and usually a muscle relaxer

or what's called a
benzodiazepine, like Valium.

- Oh, my goodness.
All in one?

- All in one.

They were given
massive quantities,

usually between
300 and 500 pills.

And here's the scary part.

The cocktail was thought up not
by the doctors at the clinic,

but by the addicts,
because the addicts understood

if you combine an opioid
with a benzodiazepine,

you actually get higher than
you would with just the opioid.

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- What are some of the tools
we used against this group?

- We were on
an Organized Crime squad,

and we treated this group
as a RICO investigation, right?

This was racketeering.
This was all friends and family

joined together
for the purpose

of committing crime
for profit.

And we treated them
no different than

Italian American Mafia
or Russian Mafia cases.

They sold drugs, intimidation,
threatening competitors,

money laundering.

They did all of it.

We started to realize that
because these patients

were coming from other parts
of the country,

maybe we should go
to those parts of the country

and see what's law enforcement
doing about the problem there,

and work together with them.

The core of the drug
addiction problem,

as far as oxycodone was
concerned, was in Appalachia.

# #

I went to Harlan County,
Kentucky.

And that is also where
we learned about sponsoring.

- What's sponsoring?

- In Appalachia, a drug dealer
would sponsor a vehicle.

So he would get five people,
stick them all in a car,

pay their gas,
their hotel expenses,

and the money that
they're gonna need for pills,

so give them a wad of cash,
you know,

between $8,000 and $10,000.

This caravan would
come to South Florida,

stay in a hotel
for a day or two,

and go to multiple clinics
and load up on pills,

and then drive all the way
back to Appalachia.

- And once back, what do they
do with their collection?

- They would give half
to the sponsor,

and they were allowed
to keep the other half

to sell for themselves or use,

'cause everybody
was an addict,

so all the dealers
were also addicts.

And you have to look
at the economics of it.

A 30 milligram oxycodone pill
in South Florida

you could buy for $2 or $3.

That same pill
in Appalachia is now $30.

We ended up eventually on a tap
of Chris George's cell phone.

- And what do you hear on that
phone when you get up on it?

- He's complaining
about his competitors.

He is directing
clinic employees,

and more telling,
he's hiring doctors.

- Tell me about that.

I have to hear his
hiring process.

- Chris George put out
Craigslist ads...

And interviewed the doctors
over the phone or in person.

He asked them if they
had a DEA control number.

He told them,
this is what we do here.

This is what we prescribe.
Are you good with that?

And then he explained to them
that they would get paid

half of the fees
that were gathered

from the patient visits.

- How much could a doctor
make in a day?

- There were two emergency room
physicians who worked

for Chris George who were
making almost $400,000 a year

working in a hospital
as emergency room physicians.

Working for Chris George,
they were making

up to $1.2 million a year.

- What?
- Yes.

- Tell me more about
those phone calls.

- There was one
particularly shocking call

between Chris and his mom.

She was also an employee at
one of the clinics, by the way.

- Not only did we get reports
that people were dying

of overdose, but we were
also getting reports

from Highway Patrols
in other states

that people were
crashing their cars.

# #

These people all drove

to South Florida
to get the pills.

Many of them could
not wait to get back home

to start getting high.

So they're in their cars,
driving back

under the influence of opioids,

and they're crashing and dying
as well.

- Wow.

- One of the more
disturbing things

that we heard on the wire

was Chris and his associate,
Derik Nolan,

who is his head of security,
talking about

a car load of patients
who came from Appalachia,

went to their facilities
to get drugs,

and died in a train crash.

They were driving
under the influence,

tried to cross a train track.

They got hit by the train.

Derik calls Chris.
Have you seen the news?

Chris says,
is it our pain patients?

Yes.

- "You have to be an idiot
to get hit by a train."

- Wow.

- So at that point,
we also knew

the mindset of who
we were dealing with.

Not just the drug dealer,
but probably a psychopath too.

- When did you start to think
we could do something

a little more aggressive than
just Title III undercover buys?

- Towards the end of the wire,

we realized that we were
going to have to get

a search warrant
to shut all this down.

We could have waited a few more
months to gather more evidence,

but Chris was planning
to expand his empire.

He was actually looking at
getting a new primary location,

and we found out it was
a 20,000 square foot building

in Palm Beach County, Florida,
that used to be a bank.

- Oh, my.

- He could easily triple
the amount of prescriptions

that he was handing out.
- Mm-hmm.

- It was a great deal
of urgency

to get the search warrants
and gather the evidence

and shut all of this down.

They had started moving
into the facility

at the beginning of 2010.

So March 3, 2010, we hit them
with everything we had.

# #

We had over 250
law enforcement officers--

federal, state and local--

going to both brothers' houses
and all their facilities,

and their mother's house.

- We found four safes
in Mom's attic

with about 4.5 million in cash
that she'd hidden for her sons.

We also had people
going to the houses

of the clinic employees
to interview them.

My job was to lead the team
to go to Chris's house.

We get into the house.

Chris isn't there.

We come to find out
he'd actually gotten up

very early in the morning to go
harass another competitor.

Kristy, you've done a bunch of
search warrants in your time.

- Absolutely.

- You know that a lot of times
you'll do a search warrant,

you'll execute a warrant,
you will see things

you weren't expecting.

He actually had a white
supremacist flag in his garage.

I'd never seen anything
like that before.

We found three firearms...

One of which was
a stolen 9-millimeter.

- Oh, wow.
- Chris is a convicted felon.

He's not allowed
to have firearms, right?

- Oops.

- So right there, grounds
to arrest him right there.

I was also talking
to the wire team,

because one of the things
that concerned me,

I found some ammunition
in the house

that did not match the guns
that we found.

So potentially,
there's another gun out there,

probably on Chris.

So they were listening
and reporting back

to me what they were hearing.

And he had called his
girlfriend, Dianna Pavnick,

the former stripper who ran
one of his other facilities.

He's telling her, you have to
take the blame for the guns.

You're gonna have to take
the blame for some of this.

- So Chris George,
at that time,

realized the weight
of the federal government

coming down on him.
- Yeah.

- The business is shut down
at that point,

because we seized
a few hundred thousand doses

of oxycodone and Xanax
from the clinics.

# #

And we seized almost 28,000

patient files
from the clinics.

- What do you find from the
patient files that you grabbed?

- We actually sat down
and went through, by hand,

almost 10,000
of those patient files.

The first thing
you start to see

is that everybody is
getting the same medication.

Chris actually had
rubber stamps made up

for the dosage and the drug,

and the doctors would rubber
stamp all the prescriptions.

# #

The most disturbing thing,
we started to see a notation

in the files that said "DC."

What does that mean?

Discharged or deceased?

That was their sense of humor.

If you're deceased,
you're also discharged.

- Oh.

- So we realized, not only
did everybody in the clinic

know that the patients
were dying,

the doctors knew
the patients were dying,

and the George brothers
definitely knew

the patients were dying,
and nobody cared.

They only cared
about making money

and expanding their operation.

We gave 300 random names
from the patient files

and sent those names

to the Social Security
Administration.

And we realized that 28
of the 300 names that we sent

were dead, so almost 10%.

- Wow, that's a tremendous
amount when you start looking

at 28,000, 10% of that.
- Yeah.

You're looking at
almost 2,800 people dead

in about a year and a half.

And that's just the patients
who came to the facility.

Remember, these drugs
are all being sold

directly to the streets.

We had no idea how many people
died on the streets.

- Right.

- About a year and a half
after the search warrants,

we arrested 32 employees
of this clinic,

including Chris
and Jeff George.

32 people who,
in less than two years,

made more than $40 million...

Pushing way over
20 million doses

of just the narcotics alone,
the opioids.

It contributed
to an estimated 2,800 deaths

caused by the drugs
dispensed by their clinics.

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They are also nowhere near
as many pain clinics now.

You have to look hard
to find them,

instead of being
on every corner.

- How does this case rank
with all the other cases

you've been involved in?

- This is probably
the most impactful

investigation in my career.

The number of overdose deaths
in the state of Florida alone

had dropped 41% in the year
following this investigation.

- Wow.
- And that's impactful.

It wasn't the end
of the crisis, obviously,

but we did our part,
and we're very proud of that.

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