FLORIDA PILL MILLS: DIFFERENT DRUGS, SAME FACES

Ex-cons like Vinny Colangelo are barred from certain business pursuits.

Felons can't get a license in Florida as a pest-control operator.
Colangelo can't be a private detective or paramedic or title
insurance agent or bail bondsman or labor union business agent. He
can forget about employment with the Florida Lottery. Or qualifying
as a notary.

"In Florida, this guy couldn't own a liquor store," said Broward
Sheriff Al Lamberti.

Yet according to the DEA, Vincent Colangelo, who couldn't kill bugs,
serve cocktails or tail a cheating husband, could operate seven pain
clinics and a pharmacy in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. His pill
mills peddled more than 660,000 doses of oxycodone in just two years.
The feds calculated Vinny's proceeds at $22,392,391.

Ex-felons may find a lot of enterprises off limits, but to the
consternation of Sheriff Lamberti, Florida's famously lax regulation
of pill mills offered a seamless transition for someone like
Colangelo. He emerged from prison in 2004 after serving a four-year
term for trafficking in heroin and cocaine and used his druggie
expertise, according to the DEA, to build a $150,000-a-day business
selling prescription narcotics.

"Selling prescription drugs is a lot more lucrative than selling
coke," said Capt. Karl Durr, head of the Palm Beach County narcotics
unit. "You don't have to cross international borders. The drugs are
legally produced. And, for us, investigations are a lot more
complicated, longer. A lot more expensive."

Colangelo, busted Feb. 23 when federal, state and local cops closed
down a dozen pain clinics in South Florida, was not the only
convicted drug dealer in South Florida who got richer, faster, easier
by peddling oxycodone. Pill-mill magnate Kent A. Murry came into the
business with 15 previous arrests on his resume, included getting
nabbed twice bringing in planeloads of marijuana from Colombia. Not
to mention a very suspicious crash of a helicopter that happened to
have a quantity of cocaine on board.

His criminal background was a perfect fit for Florida's burgeoning
pill industry.

Anthony Laterza was arrested the same day as Murry and Colangelo.
Tony had rated a previous mention in the Palm Beach Post when, "On
Aug. 24, 2001, Martin County sheriff's deputies discovered Laterza
alone with a knife, a pump-action shotgun and a still-smoking bong in
a suburban Stuart self-storage unit packed with 230 marijuana plants."

Just two years after getting out of federal prison, Laterza made a
smooth and profitable transition into the pill-mill racket. According
to the feds, his business took in $974,564.39 in just two months. The
old pot dealer was able to buy himself a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and
other exotic cars. (Impressive, but hardly the fleet of 45 cars
Colangelo managed to accumulate).

Three clinics run by Jeffrey and Christopher George, the notorious
twins of Royal Palm Beach, were raided in March 2010. Neither were
strangers to law enforcement. In 2003, Jeffrey pleaded guilty to
felony charges of dealing in stolen property and resisting arrest.
Brother Christopher pleaded guilty to grand theft and possession of
steroids with intent to sell.

Florida law now requires that a licensed physician own a pain clinic.
But the Feb. 23 arrests seemed to indicate that the old operators,
with docs as front men, still ran the show. Others, Durr said, "Skirt
the law by calling them something else. Instead of a pain clinic,
they're rebranded as a wellness clinic."

But Durr added, "Pain clinics are just a symbol of how things are so
far out of whack. But even if we shut them down, it wouldn't end the
problem. The problem is doctor shopping.

"They go from doctor to doctor, from pharmacy to pharmacy, and
there's no way to stop it," Durr said. "That's why we need a database
or else we this will just continue."

Except the governor, despite pleas from Florida law enforcement, has
vowed that there will be no database.

"When I took over the narcotics unit six and one-half years ago, I
thought cocaine was my biggest problem," Durr said. "Now I know that
it's pharmaceutical drugs."

A different drug maybe, but some of the same old faces.