Pill Mill Operator Convicted Under Maryland Drug Kingpin Law

ANNAPOLIS, MD – A Baltimore man who ran a Glen Burnie pill mill was convicted this week on 21 charges, including violating Maryland’s drug kingpin statute, prosecutors say. An Anne Arundel County judge found Tormarco Harris, 32, of Baltimore, guilty on all counts for his role in a medical practice that authorities say over-prescribed addictive narcotics that contributed to the area's opioid epidemic.

Judge Michael Wachs convicted Harris of one count of violating Maryland’s drug kingpin statute; one count of conspiring to distribute controlled dangerous substances; 18 counts of distributing controlled dangerous substances; and one count of maintaining a common nuisance, according to a news release from the Maryland Attorney General's office.

Sentencing has been scheduled for June 12. Harris faces a 20-year mandatory minimum prison sentence under Maryland’s drug kingpin statute and up to 20 years imprisonment on each of the conspiracy and distribution charges.

“Lives are being lost in every corner of our state to opioid addiction,” said Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh in a news release. “Harris and his co-conspirators operated pill mills and illegally prescribed highly addictive drugs in exchange for hundreds of dollars from each patient. My office, with the assistance of federal and local law enforcement, came down hard, shut them down, and Harris now faces decades of time behind bars.”

According to evidence admitted at trial, Harris and Dr. Kofi Shaw-Taylor owned and operated Starlife Wellness Center in Glen Burnie. From June 2015 through August 2017, Harris and Dr. Shaw-Taylor ran Starlife as a pill mill, where, in exchange for cash, patients received unlawful prescriptions for large quantities of narcotics, including oxycodone, morphine, tramadol, and benzodiazepine.

Evidence also showed that medical professionals working at Starlife were pressured to change prescriptions to prescribe higher quantities of narcotics to their patients and wrote unlawful prescriptions for high volumes of oxycodone and other drugs to Harris and one of his relatives. When police executed a search warrant at Harris’s home in August 2017, they reportedly found a large amount of cash, prescription pads, a cash counting machine, and numerous letters from national pharmacy chains placing Harris on notice of the problematic prescription practices at Starlife.

Dr. Shaw-Taylor previously pleaded guilty and received a five-year prison sentence based on his role at Starlife and another pill mill he operated in Baltimore called Westside Medical Group. In August 2017,
Shaw-Taylor, Harris, and eight others were indicted by Frosh's office in connection with the pill mill operations in Anne Arundel County and the city of Baltimore. All of their co-defendants have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

Shaw-Taylor is one of four doctors, along with several pharmaceutical companies, being sued by Anne Arundel County for allegedly over-prescribing highly addictive opioids seen as a gateway to heroin abuse.

RELATED: Anne Arundel First MD County To Sue Doctors, Opioid Makers

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