HOUSTON — Five people from five Houston-area pharmacies and clinics face federal charges for illegal drug distributions, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Three pharmacists, a doctor, and a pharmacy technician are accused of running "pill mills," or pain clinics that prescribe large amounts of drugs to patients for nonmedical reasons, authorities said.
The Justice Department claims three pharmacies illegally distributed almost four million opioids since January 2018: Keystone, Peoples and Chrisco.
The pharmacists-in-charge at Peoples and Keystone were arrested in connection with large distributions of hydrocodone and oxycodone.
They're accused of directing their pharmacies to buy the pills and then selling them to drug traffickers called "crew leaders."
Those traffickers allegedly paid others to act as patients to get the drugs and sell them in a black market.
The Keystone pharmacist and owner is believed to have bought and sold over 1 million pills between 2018 and 2020. The Peoples pharmacist is accused of distributing about 250,000 pills throughout 2019.
Representatives with the Justice Department said the two pharmacy schemes were similar, but there were no confirmed connections between them.
Two other people are charged with running the Chrisco pharmacy as a pill mill between Jan 2018 and Oct 2021.
According to court documents, a pharmacist and a pharmacist technician made the facility appear kid-friendly while dispensing and distributing the same opioids as the other two pharmacies.
The two are accused of selling the pills in bulk to traffickers without any prescription, doctors, or patients involved. They then used their profits to promote their enterprise, authorities said.
A doctor is also accused of running two other pill-mill clinics: one in Houston and one in Pasadena.
Crew leaders were seen paying for fake patients, filling out their paperwork, and coaching them on what to say right before their appointments, authorities claim.
Documents say undercover officers got illegal prescriptions from the doctor at his clinics in 2020 and 2021. The 2020 appointment supposedly lasted less than two minutes before the officer got a prescription for large amounts of opioids.
All of the suspects are facing charges related to illegally distributing Schedule II opioids and could get up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
The two behind the alleged Chrisco scheme are facing at least 10 more years for money laundering and tax charges.
