A doctor and the owner of A-Stop Pain Management in Orlando were arrested Wednesday on accusations of trafficking hundreds of thousands of narcotic pain pills.
Dr. Laurence Skolnik and business owner Billie Aldridge were arrested on charges of racketeering, trafficking and conspiracy to traffic in hydrocodone and oxycodone.
The arrests came after an undercover operation by the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation.
Patients were at the East Colonial Drive business Wednesday when MBI agents arrived to arrest Skolnik and Aldridge, but no patients were taken into custody.
More than 900,000 pills have been prescribed from the clinic in just the last year, MBI said.
An undercover agent was able to get prescriptions even after he told the doctor that he had a drug problem, said agents.
“Patients came from as far away as the Panhandle and Miami, Florida, to this location to receive these highly-addictive drugs,” said MBI director Ron Stucker.
The investigation revealed that Skolnik prescribed nearly 2,700 pills a day, authorities said.
“This is certainly on the very high-end end, that one place this size would be dispensing that much of this medication,” said Stucker.
Agents said the demand was so high, that the undercover agent with an appointment waited five hours to see the doctor.
The agent said there were patients with "track marks" and patients “fading in and out of consciousness.”
Agents said the doctor also prescribed pills to patients who had no opioids in their system after he prescribed them, leading investigators to believe that they were selling the pills.
“If a patient were to come in after they were prescribed numerous prescriptions of opioids and have a clean drug screen, it begs the question, ‘What are they doing with that medication?'” Stucker asked.
The Department of Health closed the clinic in 2011, but allowed it to reopen as long as the facility provided prescriptions, and not pills.
“I've represented (Aldridge) on certain things, and this is new to me right now,” attorney Irwin Sperling said.
The Department of Health issued an emergency restriction on Skolnik’s license.
A complaint against Skolnik was already pending with the state, alleging that he did not keep proper records for several patients at a different clinic and that he prescribed medication to people who failed drug tests.
The allegations against Skolnik surfaced in 2013, but were not filed until 2015.
Aldridge’s bail was set at $1.9 million and Skolnik’s was set at $1 million.
Cox Media Group
