Owings Mills Pill Mill Operator Sentenced to Prison

OWINGS MILLS, MD – For his involvement in an Owings Mills pain clinic, a Florida man was sentenced to three years in prison Tuesday, followed by three years of supervised release.

Gerald Wiseberg, 83, of Boca Raton, Fla., was convicted of conspiring to distribute oxycodone and other drugs.

Chief U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake ordered him to pay $273,000 in addition to serving time in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland.

Wiseberg opened the Healthy Life clinic in 2011 in Owings Mills with two individuals from New York, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.

Previously, he had run Total Care Medical Center, a pain management clinic in Deerfield Beach, Fla., where physicians accepted cash for writing prescriptions for large amounts of oxycodone and alprazolam for people who did not legitimately need them, the statement said.

"Gerald Wiseberg traveled from state to state setting up clinics that prescribed opioid drugs to people who had no medical need for the drugs," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement.

"State and federal authorities are continuing to look at ways to shut down ‘pain clinics’ that are really just fronts for criminals who divert pharmaceutical drugs and hook a new generation of addicts."

More than 80 percent of the customers who obtained a prescription from Healthy Life were from out of state, prosecutors said, and about 97 percent received oxycodone.

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The Healthy Life clinic relocated from the 9600 block of Reisterstown Road to the 1100 block of York Road in Lutherville on Nov. 26, 2011, according to an affidavit in support of a search warrant.

The “pill mill" attracted large and unruly crowds of drug users who used drugs and engaged in drug transactions outside, prosecutors said.

Weinberg made at least about $300,000 from his ownership in Healthy Life, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The three-year prison sentence also covered Weinberg's involvement in a scheme in New York, where he pleaded guilty to encouraging pain clinic patients to fill their prescriptions at pharmacies controlled by his associates, where they would pay marked-up prices for oxycodone, the U.S. Attorney said.

As part of the scheme, patients were told to fill another prescription, one for a non-narcotic substanc.

"This pill mill operator case shows the complexity of the drug abuse cycle and how law enforcement must take a multi-tiered approach in dealing with prescription drug abuse..." Assistant Special Agent in Charge Don A. Hibbert said in a statement.