JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A doctor and a physician's assistant were arrested during a Tuesday morning raid of a Northside medical clinic that police said was a case of legalized drug dealing.
The raid culminated a eight-month investigation into the S&P Medical Clinic at 10157 Lem Turner Road, where police said medical professionals were dispensing prescription drugs for cash.
Still wearing his white lab coat, Dr. David Maurer was handcuffed and put into a police car. Police said his assistant, Sandy Lindstrom, was also arrested.
Dozens of patients at the clinic when police arrived were interviewed, but none of them were arrested.
The investigation, named Operation Medication Station, began when police learned that people from as far away as Georgia and Lake City were coming to get prescriptions with little or no medical examination.
Information from nine undercover officers who went in and received prescriptions from the clinic was used to obtain the search warrant used in Tuesday's raid.
Police said the clinic was seeing 60 to 100 people per day and the doctor would sometime meet with patients in groups. Patients paid $140 in cash and walked out with an of average three prescriptions -- some for narcotics.
The clinic, which is licensed by the state of Florida, did not accept insurance, detectives said.
Authorities told Channel 4's Jennifer Waugh that the clinic had collected about $800,000 in cash for the prescriptions since April.
Among the drugs prescribed were three of the most widely abused prescription medications: Oxycodone, Xanax, and Hydrocodone.
"If you were sick, you did not want to go here," Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Assistant Chief John Hartley said. "If you had something wrong with you, this is not the place to be."
Police said they suspect that many of the people using the clinic were either hooked on the drugs or were turning around and selling the pills on the street for $5 to $15 per pill.
Police said they were now looking into any connection between people who received drugs from the clinic and overdose cases.
Waugh said several Northside residents came by to say they suspected things were not right at the clinic and were glad that police had finally cracked down on it.
Maurer was a licensed medical doctor. According to the Florida Department of Health's Web site, Maurer graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1964, performed an internship at an Army hospital in Georgia, serviced a residency in Oregon and has practiced medicine since 1967.
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