Pain clinic owner given racketeering conviction
WEST PALM BEACH — A suburban Delray Beach former pain clinic operator is likely headed to prison after a jury on Wednesday convicted him of racketeering and drug trafficking charges tied to claims that he ran a pill mill operation out of Palm Springs and Boca Raton.
Jurors c onvic t e d Ri c hard McMillan after nearly 1 0 hours of del i berat i on that began Tuesday, capping a two-week trial centered on his ownership of two branches of Total Medical Express — a business prosecutors say was a front for an illicit prescription drug operation.
Circuit Judge Cheryl Caracuzzo ordered McMillan to be taken to the Palm Beach County Jail immediately after Wednesday’s verdict, where he will remain until she sentences him on Feb. 27.
McMillan, 44, rejec ted a 10-year plea deal before the start of his trial earlier this month. He now faces a maximum possible 330-year prison sentence.
On Monday he took the stand in his own defense and said that while he was in charge of the medical practices in Boca Raton and Palm Springs, he never oversaw any of the doctors and had no input, control or direct contact with the powerful painkillers they dispensed at the cash-only business.
“I was only involved in marketing, and office administration primarily. That’s what I did,” McMillan told jurors Monday under questioning from defense attorney Marc Nurik, who represented McMillan along with Guy Fronstin.
Assistant State Attorneys Adriana Lopez and Christopher Hudock told jurors in closing arguments Tuesday that McMillan practiced “willful blindness” to illegal activity at the clinic because the business brought him an estimated $1.25 million.
McMillan and business partner Pascuale Gervasio were arrested in the summer of 2011 as state and local authorities cracked down on suspected pill mill operations statewide. The t wo were first arrested after a yearlong investigation dubbed “Operation Blue Spoon.”
Gervasio pleaded guilty to four charges last month connected to his role in the operation, including racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering and trafficking in oxycodone. He is currently awaiting sentencing.
Hudock, in his last word to jurors Tuesday, said that the high doses of painkillers the doctors dispensed to cash-paying customers could have been lethal.
“I don’t think what anyone is saying is that this clinic was in the business of trying to kill people,” Hudock s a i d. “But t hat ’s ex a c t l y what would have happened if these patients had taken their medicine.”