Michael Shook, MD, of Oakland Park, Fla., has been sentenced to four years in prison for illegally prescribing painkillers to Kentuckians who traveled to a Florida-based pill mill, according to a report by the Middlesboro Daily News.
Dr. Shook, an internist, was the only physician employed by the clinic and was paid as much as $6,000 per week by two men who provided the funds to open the clinic and filled the prescriptions. The investigation was conducted by FBI agents in Kentucky and Miami.
Ninety percent of patients at the pill mill were from Kentucky. Before writing prescriptions for Oxycodone and Methadone, Dr. Shook performed only limited examinations, if any at all. All the Kentucky visitors paid him in cash and filled the prescriptions at the clinic's in-house pharmacy.
Read the Middlesboro Daily News report on pill mills.
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