Pharmacy filled thousands of opioid prescriptions for ‘pill mill’ in Georgia, feds say
A Georgia pharmacy that filled thousands of illegal prescriptions was slapped with fines up to $2.1 million, officials say.
Chip’s Discount Drugs dispensed 350,000 opioids and other substances during a two-year period, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia said Tuesday.
Those drugs came from the prescription pad of Dr. Frank Bynes Jr., who worked in internal medicine, federal prosecutors said in a news release.
The pharmacy is accused of looking past “red flags” about Bynes, including that his patients were traveling hours to get drugs and that the combinations he prescribed were sometimes used by people with opioid addictions, according to the release.
Chip’s Discount Drugs filled prescriptions it “knew or should have known were not issued for legitimate medical reasons and by a provider not acting within the regular course of professional practice,” prosecutors said in a federal complaint filed last month.
In one case, the pharmacy filled 17,500 prescription doses for a family of three over a two-year period, the complaint said.
The business and its owner, Rogers “Chip” Wood Jr., also couldn’t account for roughly 9,000 pills of powerful painkillers, according to prosecutors.
What happens next?
The pharmacist and Chip’s Discount Drugs agreed to settle the civil case and will now pay as much as $2.1 million in penalties, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The drug store is in Hazlehurst, a city roughly 105 miles southeast of Macon. Wood’s pharmacy license was listed as “active” as of Friday morning, state records show.
Federal officials say they are committed to making sure all drug dispensers are held accountable.
“This pharmacist scarred many lives through his actions,” Robert J. Murphy of the Drug Enforcement Administration said in the news release. “Unfortunately, many of those patients will struggle with addiction for the rest of their lives.”
Near Savannah, Gordon’s Pharmacy and its owner Steven Keith Gordon will pay as much as $200,000 to resolve a settlement related to prescriptions from Bynes, according to the release. Cases involving businesses in Darien and Baxley were previously announced.
Officials say they continue to investigate pharmacies with connections to the doctor and his so-called “pill mill.”
Last month, Bynes was ordered to serve a 20-year prison sentence on counts of healthcare fraud and unlawful dispensation, the federal government said.
It wasn’t the first time pharmacies faced a similar fate.
Last month, a North Carolina business was ordered to stop dispensing drugs after allegedly ignoring warning signs for “drug-seeking behavior,” The News & Observer reported.
The cases come after 128 people died each day after overdosing on opioids in 2018, according to an update last month from the National Institutes of Health.
This story was originally published March 27, 2020 at 10:48 AM with the headline "Pharmacy filled thousands of opioid prescriptions for ‘pill mill’ in Georgia, feds say."
