Owner of 'Pill Mill' Pleads Guilty To Distributing Drugs

An 82-year-old Florida man pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to charges that he partially owned and operated an illegal clinic in the Baltimore suburbs that dispensed oxycodone and other narcotics.

Gerald Wiseberg, of Boca Raton, opened the Healthy Life clinic in 2011 in Owings Mills with two co-conspirators from Maryland, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland. The “pill mill,” which later moved to Timonium, attracted large and unruly crowds of drug users, prosecutors said.

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

Wiseburg also pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute oxycodone and other drugs in New York, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each drug conspiracy charge, and his sentencing is scheduled for March 7 in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

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

According to his plea agreement, from March 2010 through February 2011, Wiseberg owned and operated a pain management clinic in Deerfield Beach, Fla. Although he was not a medical doctor, he decided which medications that clinic physicians could prescribe and the maximum dosages, prosecutors said.

As a result, the clinic “accepted cash payments in exchange for providing prescriptions for large amounts of controlled substances (including oxycodone and alprazolam) to customers who did not have a legitimate medical need for the drugs,” the statement said.

In late 2010 and early 2011, the two unnamed Maryland co-conspirators traveled to Florida to learn how to operate a pill mill, prosecutors said. By early 2011, Wiseberg and the pair agreed to open a clinic in Maryland, calling it Healthy Life, with Wiseberg as part owner.

“Wiseberg interviewed and hired medical directors at Healthy Life specifically because he believed they would write prescriptions for narcotics to customers without a legitimate medical need,” the statement said.

Healthy Life first opened in Owings Mills, but in October 2011, it moved to a larger office in Timonium. “Both locations attracted large and unruly crowds,” the statement said. “While outside the locations, customers caused disturbances, used narcotics, and engaged in narcotics transactions.”

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.