Feds: Pill mill operators are hiding income

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

A couple accused of running a pill mill are operating a second clinic and using profits they hid from the government to take extensive gambling and shopping trips, federal prosecutors said in a filing Thursday.

The government wants the bond revoked for Nancy and Lester Sadler, accused of running a pain- management clinic in a southern Ohio county considered one of the worst places in the country for painkiller addiction.

The Sadlers didn’t tell the government they run another clinic making $15,000 a week, “While the taxpayers are footing the bill for the Sadlers’ criminal defense,” Timothy Mangan, an assistant U.S. attorney, said in the filing.

The government also alleges the Sadlers require patients visiting their pain- management clinic, in Columbus, to bring a second patient not being treated for pain. The government calls these sham patients, meant to subvert a new law limiting how much of a clinic’s business involves pain treatment.

The government says one of these sham patients died after obtaining pills at the Columbus clinic.

“The Sadlers’ continued operation of an illegitimate pain clinic also creates a substantial risk to the community,” Mangan said in the filing, arguing it justifies revoking the couple’s bond arrangements.

The Sadlers are free on their own recognizance, according to filings in the case.

Richard Goldberg, attorney for Lester Sadler, said Thursday he had not seen the motion and could not comment.

Goldberg said previously that the Sadlers did everything they could to ensure proper medical care was given to patients at their clinic in Scioto County, which since has closed.

A message was left with Nancy Sadler’s attorney, Steven Hillman, who in the past has not returned phone calls about the case.

A year ago, the Sadlers submitted affidavits saying they made a combined monthly income of $3,860 and required government-funded defense attorneys.

The government says that since the original indictment, the couple has continued to operate Ohio Medical West, a clinic in Columbus, with Lester Sadler as owner and Nancy Sadler as an employee.

The government says that the Columbus clinic takes in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and that after expenses, the couple is spending thousands of dollars on purchases for an embroidery business and on gambling trips.

The government says this year alone, Nancy Sadler gambled with $58,533 at the Hollywood Casino in Indiana, while Lester Sadler gambled with $21,368.

The 2010 indictment against the Sadlers alleges that employees at their southern Ohio pain clinic were required to set up enough appointments to fill 30 to 40 prescriptions of powerful painkillers a day at $125 a visit.

Workers who met the quota would receive a week’s pay for three or four days’ work, according to the government. Those who slipped up got less.

In May, Gov. John Kasich signed into law a bill cracking down on pain- management clinics, dubbed pill mills by their critics and blamed by health officials for contributing to hundreds of overdose deaths in Ohio each year.