Christopher Paul George
[1] The media called him Pill Mill Kingpin,[2][3] because he was the owner of the largest network of such clinics in Florida between February 2008 and March 2010.
The twin brothers Chris and Jeff grew up as children of John George and his wife Denice Haggerty in Wellington, Florida, an area where the inhabitants are considered to be wealthy.
[5] Before entering the pill mill business, Chris George and his twin brother Jeff ran the South Beach Rejuvenation Clinic, a company that sold anabolic steroids illegally.
[7] After talks with a doctor, Chris George decided at the end of 2007 to enter the pain management business together with his twin brother.
A few weeks after the business started, a large number of Kentucky and Tennessee-bases customers visited the South Florida Pain Clinic.
Chris George also hired experts to optimize search engine rankings for the South Florida Pain Clinic website.
[5] Complaints from owners of surrounding businesses led to the publication of a newspaper report about the South Florida Pain Clinic.
[11] After a few weeks, complaints from residents also increased, resulting in the South Florida Pain Clinic receiving scrutiny from media law enforcement agencies, and the landlord terminated the lease.
[15] The search for a new location for American Pain began in November 2009[16] and Chris George decided to move to a former bank building on the North Dixie Highway in Lake Worth.
[21][22] In August 2011, an FBI representative described the group of companies as the largest criminal organization in the USA dealing with the illegal distribution of painkillers.
[23] For approximately 14 months, the FBI, DEA, the Internal Revenue Service, Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and other law enforcement agencies evaluated information about the corporate group in covert Operation Oxy Alley[24][25][21] before searching clinics and private homes and securing extensive evidence on March 3, 2010.
[29] In order to prove the cooperation of the defendants and the role of the doctors, the indictment was based, among other things, on the RICO act, a federal law passed in 1970, in particular to combat the American mafia.
The CNBC series American Greed made the pill mills of the George twins the subject of the episode Pain Killer Profits in June 2016.
[34] History produced Legal Pill Mills Ushered America's Opium Crisis, which deals with the George twins' ventures.
[35] John Temple published his book American Pain in 2015, which traces the rise and fall of George's Pill Mills.
