Man admits guilt in pill scheme
A land surveyor admitted Tuesday that he helped Christopher Grant Watson, then a pharmacist and co-owner of the Perry County Food and Drug store in Perryville, carry out a five-year conspiracy to distribute hydrocodone without an effective prescription.
U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. accepted a guilty plea from Bartley Wayne McMillen to the conspiracy charge, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million when he is sentenced at a later date.
McMillen’s plea agreement holds him responsible for the distribution of 100,000 10mg hydrocodone pills, which under federal sentencing guidelines is punishable to the same extent as a person who has distributed about 100 kilograms of marijuana. A kilo is 2.2 pounds.
As a friend of Watson’s, McMillen’s role was to use equipment in his vehicle, including a printer, to help Watson create phony prescriptions to cover missing ones that were discovered in a pharmaceutical audit, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne Gardner.
Watson, who co-owned the drugstore with his father, Tommy Watson, pleaded guilty Oct. 5 to the conspiracy charge, admitting that he dispensed the Schedule II controlled substance and other controlled substances without effective prescriptions between January 2010 and January 2015. Watson also pleaded guilty to health-care fraud and structuring. He has not yet been sentenced.
Gardner told Moody at Tuesday’s plea hearing that Watson was the managing pharmacist at the Perryville store when he sold “tens of thousands of pills” after regular business hours, in bulk quantities, to people he knew planned to sell them on the street and then forged prescriptions to cover his actions. She said McMillen assisted him.
Last month, Moody issued a preliminary order requiring Watson to forfeit to the government $850,000, the amount of money prosecutors said he received in proceeds from the drug trafficking, as well as 62 firearms and assorted ammunition.
Tommy Watson pleaded guilty Feb. 1 to misprision of a felony, or knowing about a crime but failing to report it. He also hasn’t been sentenced.
McMillen was represented Tuesday by Little Rock attorney Marjorie Rogers.