Christopher Paul George

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Identification photo of Chris George

Christopher Paul George , Chris George for short (born November 11, 1980 in the United States ) is an American entrepreneur and felon . Together with his twin brother Jeffrey Frank George (Jeff George for short) and others involved, he operated several pill mills in Florida , illegal clinics for the distribution of prescription narcotics, which contributed to the spread of the opioid crisis in the USA . For these and other offenses , George was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison in 2012. The media referred to him as the Pill Mill Kingpin , the gang boss of the pill factories , because between February 2008 and March 2010 he had become the owner of the largest network of such pain clinics in Florida.

Origin, family, adolescence

The twin brothers grew up as children of John George and his wife Denice Haggerty in Wellington, Florida , an area whose residents are considered to be wealthy. The father had gotten rich in the construction sector. The parents divorced in 1988. According to their father, Chris and Jeff weren't very good students, but they learned entrepreneurship at home.

Chris was first arrested at the age of 13. Further conflicts with the law enforcement officers followed due to illicit possession of alcohol, fights , administrative offenses , obstruction of justice and theft . In 2003 he was arrested for having ordered and accepted a package of anabolic steroids for his own use and for friends . Chris George was sentenced to eight months in prison, six of which he was serving, mostly as an outdoor prisoner in his father's business. After his release from prison, he continued working in his father's construction company. Previously, Chris had studied business administration and construction management without a degree , two years at Palm Beach Community College and two years at Florida International University .

First sales activities

Prior to entering the pill mill business, Chris George and his twin brother Jeff ran the South Beach Rejuvenation Clinic , a company that illegally sold anabolic steroids. After telemedical consultations by phone or email, muscle building preparations were distributed. Jeff George was registered as the owner of this business, which was established around 2006.

Pill Mills

South Florida Pain Clinic

After talking to a doctor, Chris George decided at the end of 2007 to get into the pain management business with his twin brother . He pushed ahead with the relevant planning and preparations so that the South Florida Pain Clinic could start in February 2008. Her first location was a bungalow on Oakland Park Boulevard , Fort Lauderdale .

Within two weeks, Chris George saw the opportunities in the pill-mill business and began expanding. He posted job offers for doctors on craiglist.org . A few weeks after business began, a large number of clients from Kentucky and Tennessee visited the South Florida Pain Clinic . The revenues rose significantly, partly because so-called sponsors occurred. They each paid a handful of people - often opioid addicts - to visit the South Florida Pain Clinic , receive prescriptions for high-dose pain relievers, and buy hundreds of prescription pain pills at the clinic . The patients or buyers gave a relevant part of these tablets to the sponsors , who then sold these tablets on the black market.

Advertising on large billboards , in free newspapers and on the Internet also contributed to the company's success . Chris George also hired experts to place the South Florida Pain Clinic website optimally in search engines . At the same time he took care of building a stable network of suppliers , mostly smaller painkiller distributors.

Complaints from owners of nearby stores resulted in a newspaper report on the South Florida Pain Clinic . As a result, under surveillance the police what happened. The clinic reacted to these circumstances and the rapidly increasing number of clients in summer 2008 by moving to a new location, the Cypress Creek Executive Court office complex near Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport . The number of staff has been increased at this location. After a few weeks, local residents' complaints also piled up, causing the South Florida Pain Clinic to once again attract journalists and law enforcement officials. The landlord terminated the lease.

American Pain

American Pain's waiting room , located on North Dixie Highway, Lake Worth on March 3, 2010 ( FBI photo)

For these reasons, business continued on the North Federal Highway in Boca Raton in 2009 . The move involved a change of company name and the company was now called American Pain . In the official records, Chris George was no longer the owner, but a straw man . The business continued to flourish. In the second half of 2009, five doctors worked full-time here, plus other doctors with part-time contracts , the number of staff was around 20 people. At the same time, the internal processes were optimized so that as many patients as possible could receive painkillers in the shortest possible time. The clinic developed more and more into a “prescription assembly line”.

Despite the name change, it was not possible to evade media attention and official observation. For example, the team of the Portuguese journalist Mariana van Zeller filmed the clinic. These recordings and the subsequent pursuit of the journalist by Chris George and the head of security at American Pain were processed in Zeller's documentary The OxyContin Express , which received not only the Peabody Award (2010) but also other awards and nominations for an Emmy .

The search for a new location for American Pain began in November 2009. Chris George selected a former bank building on the North Dixie Highway in Lake Worth . It had three floors and more than 6,000 square meters; that made it twice the size of the previous building on North Federal Highway and nearly twenty times the size of the bungalow on Oakland Park Boulevard . Operations began there on February 1, 2010.

Other establishments

In 2009 Chris George opened another, much smaller clinic (Executive Pain) in West Palm Beach . Straw woman was his partner and future wife Dianna Marie Pavnick, a former stripper . In the same year he bought a pharmacy (Quick Pharm) in Orlando (Florida) , which was then also run by a straw man. Another pharmacy whose property Chris George hid was Boca Drugs in Boca Raton .

In February 2010, as a precautionary measure, the twin brothers opened a small pill mill in Kennesaw , Georgia, in the event that Florida regulations on the formulation and sale of prescription painkillers tightened .

Numbers and meaning

Doctors usually prescribe a mix of pain relievers, including large amounts of oxycodone , Xanax, and Soma . In the Pill Mill American Pain alone, doctors treated up to 500 patients a day. From July 7, 2008 to about March 2, 2010, doctors at this clinic wrote approximately 66,871 prescriptions, 96 percent for oxycodone or alprazolam . Around 80 percent of the prescriptions for this pill mill were given to non-Florida residents.

In August 2011, an FBI representative named the group of companies the largest criminal organization in the United States that did business with the illegal distribution of painkillers.

Christopher Paul George stated that his pill mills made more than forty million dollars.

Observations, criminal proceedings, judgments

One of four vaults of money found in Chris George's mother's attic (FBI photo taken March 2010)

About 14 months the FBI, which evaluated DEA , the Internal Revenue Service of the United States , the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and other law enforcement agencies in the covert operation Oxy Alley of information on the corporate network before 2010 clinics and private homes on March 3, searched and secured extensive evidence . The confiscated items owned by Chris George included three large estates , several luxury cars and motor boats . In the attic of Chris George's mother's house, $ 4.3 million was found in cash, stowed in several safes .

The 123-page indictment dated August 11, 2011 was directed against Chris George, his twin brother Jeff, Dianna Pavnick George, Denice Haggerty, 13 medical professionals and 15 other perpetrators. In order to be able to prove the cooperation of the defendants and the role of the doctors in court, the indictment was based, among other things, on the RICO Act , a federal law that was passed in 1970 in particular to combat the American mafia . The charges were organized crime , conspiracy to launder money , illegal distribution of specially monitored drugs, maintenance of premises connected with drugs, and conspiracy to fraud in the Internet and mail order business .

Many of the accused pleaded guilty and received prison terms. Chris George was one of them and received a seventeen and a half year sentence in early February 2012. In April 2014, it was cut to 14 years after Chris George was working with authorities on the trial of two of his former doctors on charges of murder .

reception

In addition to contemporary news coverage in newspapers and television stations, the criminal activities of Chris George and his twin brother have been picked up in other formats. The TV series Evil Twins described the behavior of the twin brothers in the episode The Candymen , which aired in 2015. The CNBC -Sendereihe American Greed made the Pill Mills George Twins in June 2016 episode Painkiller profit on the subject. History produced Legal Pill Mills Ushered America's Opium Crisis , which looks at the George twins' endeavors. In 2015, John Temple published his book American Pain , which traces the rise and fall of the Pill Mills by Chris George. Warner Warner Bros. acquired the film rights to Temple's work in 2014. In September 2019, it was announced that a new production company - Faster Horse Pictures - was planning the filming.

attachment

literature

  • John Temple: American Pain. How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic . Lyons Press, Guilford (Connecticut) 2015, ISBN 978-1-4930-1959-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b U.S. Attorney's Office. Southern District of Florida: Four More Defendants Sentenced in Broward and Palm Beach Counties in Pill Mill Operation. Four Additional Defendants Sentenced Today in Operation Oxy Alley. In: archives.fbi.gov. February 3, 2012, accessed May 8, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Jane Musgrave: Pill mill kingpin Chris George wins a reduced sentence for finking out doctors. In: The Palm Beach Post. April 14, 2014, accessed May 8, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Kristina Webb: Exclusive: Attorney general candidate leaves trail of debt, feuds with ex-clients, lenders. In: jacksonville.com. September 5, 2018, accessed May 8, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b Thomas Francis: How Florida brothers' 'pill mill' operation fueled painkiller abuse epidemic . In: MSNBC , May 7, 2012.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f John Temple: American Pain , Chapter 1, ISBN 978-1-4930-1959-5
  6. ↑ Episode Pain Killer Profits of American Greed on CNBC (June 30, 2016).
  7. ↑ United States Of America v. Christopher Paul George, Jeffrey George (...) (Indictment), p. 56.
  8. ↑ a b United States Of America v. Christopher Paul George, Jeffrey George (...) (Indictment), p. 4.
  9. ^ A b Juan Ortega, William Lucey: Neighbors calling clinic a pain. In: SunSentinel. July 18, 2008, accessed May 8, 2020 (article with photo of the pill mill).
  10. ^ John Temple: American Pain , Chapter 3, ISBN 978-1-4930-1959-5
  11. ↑ a b c d John Temple: American Pain , Chapter 4, ISBN 978-1-4930-1959-5
  12. ↑ a b c d e f John Temple: American Pain , Chapter 6, ISBN 978-1-4930-1959-5 .
  13. ^ John Temple: American Pain , Chapter 10, ISBN 978-1-4930-1959-5 . Temple refers here to an expert who characterized the situation as a prescription assembly line .
  14. ^ The OxyContin Express. In: documentary.net. Retrieved May 10, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Current TV: Current TV's Documentary Series 'Vanguard' Receives 69th Annual Peabody Award and 2010 Television Academy Honor. In: prnewswire.com. April 7, 2010, accessed May 3, 2020 (press release). The OxyContin Express (Current TV). In: peabodyawards.com. Retrieved May 3, 2020 (recording of the honor). International Documentary Association. In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved May 3, 2020 .
  16. ^ A b c John Temple: American Pain , Chapter 8, ISBN 978-1-4930-1959-5
  17. ^ A b John Temple: American Pain , Prologue Section , ISBN 978-1-4930-1959-5
  18. ↑ Jane Musgrave: Lawyer for doctor fires back at pill-mill operator, calling her a victim who denied prescriptions to out-of-staters. In: The Palm Beach Post. June 27, 2013, accessed May 8, 2020 .
  19. ↑ United States Of America v. Christopher Paul George, Jeffrey George (...) (Indictment), p. 57.
  20. ↑ Bob LaMendola: How the George brothers made millions with pill mills. In: The Palm Beach Post. August 26, 2011, accessed May 8, 2020 .
  21. ↑ a b c d United States Attorney's Office. Southern District of Florida: Thirty-two Indicted in Broward and Palm Beach Countries in Second Coordinated Pill Mill Takedown. In: www.justice.gov. August 23, 2011, accessed on May 8, 2020 (English, press release).
  22. ↑ United States Of America v. Christopher Paul George, Jeffrey George (...) (Indictment), p. 23.
  23. ↑ United States Of America v. Christopher Paul George, Jeffrey George (...) (Indictment), p. 34.
  24. ↑ Michael LaForgia, Niels Heimeriks: Twin kingpins behind some of the most brazen pain clinics in South Florida. In: The Palm Beach Post. March 6, 2010, accessed May 8, 2020 .
  25. ^ John Temple: American Pain , passim , ISBN 978-1-4930-1959-5 .
  26. ↑ WPBF: Wellington Man's Pain Clinics Raided (report on the raid). YouTube , uploaded in the channel of the transmitter, March 3 of 2010.
  27. ↑ United States Of America v. Christopher Paul George, Jeffrey George (...) (Indictment), p. 36.
  28. ↑ United States Of America v. Christopher Paul George, Jeffrey George (...) (Indictment), p. 94.
  29. ↑ United States Of America v. Christopher Paul George, Jeffrey George (...) , August 11, 2011.
  30. ^ John Temple: American Pain , Chapter 7, ISBN 978-1-4930-1959-5 .
  31. ↑ The Candymen in the Internet Movie Database .
  32. ↑ Preview of the episode (June 30, 2016).
  33. ↑ 8 Times America's War on Drugs Was Stranger Than Fiction. In: history.com. July 18, 2019, accessed May 10, 2020 .
  34. ^ John Temple: American Pain , ISBN 978-1-4930-1959-5 .
  35. ^ Dave McNary: Warner Bros. Developing 'American Pain' Movie with Greg Berlanti. In: Variety . November 19, 2014, accessed May 10, 2020 .
  36. ↑ Faster Horse Pictures in the Internet Movie Database .
  37. ↑ Andreas Wiseman: Cindy Bond & Doug McKay Launch Film & TV Firm Faster Horse Pictures, Set Tate Taylor Opioids Pic 'American Pain' As First Movie. In: Deadline.com . September 26, 2019, accessed on May 12, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME George, Christopher Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES George, Christopher; George, Chris; George, Christopher P.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur and criminal
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1980
PLACE OF BIRTH United States