‘Pill mill’ trial set for last 3 charged

A doctor, an advanced practical nurse and a physician’s assistant are set to be tried by a federal jury beginning Monday on charges accusing them of being part of a “pill mill” operation in west Little Rock from June 2014 through early May 2015.

The three are the only remaining defendants in what started out as a 20-person indictment handed up May 20, 2015, by a federal grand jury in Little Rock. A series of guilty pleas by other defendants — including Thursday’s guilty plea of Anthony Markeith King, the owner of the purported pill mill — has whittled the case before U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. down to the health care professionals who are maintaining their innocence.

They are Felicie Wyatt of Memphis, who was a supervising physician at the Artex Clinic on Hermitage Road from June 2014 through September 2014; Kristen L. Raines, an advanced practical nurse at the clinic in 2014; and Aaron Paul Borengasser, a physician’s assistant accused with Raines of issuing prescriptions for Schedule III and IV narcotics.

The clinic became the KJ Medical Clinic in November 2014. It was closed down as a result of the Drug Enforcement Administration raid that coincided with the indictment and was aimed at targeting sources of illegally obtained prescription medicine, which authorities say contributes to a national prescription drug abuse epidemic.

Two other physicians who were charged in the case, Shawn Michael Brooks of Little Rock and Jerry Scott Reifeiss of Conway, pleaded guilty this spring — Brooks to a lesser charge of knowing about a crime and hiding it, and Reifeiss to conspiracy. Reifeiss died June 24, just two months after his plea but before he could be sentenced.

Other defendants included clinic managers, a nurse practitioner, a pharmacist, other clinic employees and people accused of distributing the drugs that officials said were illegally obtained.