STATE ORDERS 3 BROWARD PHARMACIES ALLEGEDLY INVOLVED IN DRUG SCHEMES TO
CLOSE

Citing a danger to the public health, state health officials on Monday
issued emergency orders to shut down three Broward County pharmacies -- two
in Hollywood and one in Plantation -- and to suspend the licenses of a
doctor and three pharmacists for allegedly trafficking in prescription
painkillers.

Two of the pharmacies are owned by Seth Mahler, 50, of Plantation, president
of the Broward County Pharmacy Association. His license to practice was
suspended by the Florida Department of Health along with that of one of his
employees, Jason Villano, 29, of Oakland Park.

Mahler and Villano operate the Plantation Chemist Pharmacy, 250 S.
University Drive, Plantation, and the United Prescription Center, 4517
Hollywood Blvd., which had their operating permits suspended. The Drug Store
Pharmacy, 3397 Sheridan St., also lost its permit to do business, and its
owner and operator Julius Seiler, 49, of Coral Springs, had his pharmacy
license suspended.

The health department also suspended the license of Dr. Theodore Racciatti,
74, an osteopath from North Miami Beach.

All four were arrested July 22 on charges of trafficking in prescription
painkillers after an investigation by the Broward County Sheriff's Office,
the FBI, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and Hollywood and
Plantation police departments.

In taking the action Monday, Dr. John Agwunobi, secretary of the Florida
Department of Health, said diversion and abuse of prescription painkillers
is a major health problem in the state.

An investigation last year by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel found almost
400 deaths from prescription narcotics in a seven-county area during 2000
and 2001. A town meeting in Fort Lauderdale last week brought the governor's
wife, Columba Bush, law enforcement officials, and the mothers of several
young adults who had died from overdoses together to shed light on the
problem.

According to the emergency suspension orders provided by the state, two
confidential informants separately told Plantation police in June that they
had been able to purchase prescriptions for a variety of narcotics from
Racciatti without any legitimate medical reason.

Later that month, one of the informants visited Racciatti's office and
obtained prescriptions in exchange for cash while law enforcement officers
nearby monitored the conversations electronically, the documents said.

On one visit, the informant provided the doctor with $2,000 in cash and nine
magnetic resonance imaging reports, MRIs, each in the name of a different
fictitious patient so that the doctor could "justify" the prescriptions,
which included 300 OxyContins at 80-milligram strength, 300 at 40-milligram
strength, and 300 Percocets, according to the suspension order. Both drugs
are powerful narcotics and normally, prescriptions are limited.

"Dr. Racciatti wrote two additional prescriptions for 100 OxyContin 80 mg
for [the confidential informant's] cousins," the documents said.

The informant presented OxyContin and Percocet prescriptions to Seiler at
the Drug Store Pharmacy July 9 as investigators monitored the transactions,
but Seiler rejected the Percocet transaction as "unprofitable," according to
the documents. He filled the OxyContin prescriptions even though he was
"aware from his past dealings with [the informant] that the nine
prescriptions were fraudulent," the documents said.

A confidential informant also visited the Plantation Chemist in late June
and was able to purchase 300 OxyContin from Villano for $3,000 without
providing any prescriptions, and then asked to buy 1,000 more in a
conversation that was electronically monitored by investigators, according
to the documents.

Villano agreed to arrange a meeting between the informant and Mahler, and
Mahler sold the 1,000 OxyContin tablets without a prescription, accepting
$1,000 on the spot, with the informant promising to pay the rest, $5,500, to
Villano on a later date, according to the documents. On another occasion,
also monitored electronically, Villano sold 27.5 grams of OxyContin and
129.5 grams of alprazolam, the generic for Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, to
the undercover informant, the documents said.

None of the men whose licenses were suspended could be reached for comment,
but Alan Katz, executive director of the Broward County Pharmacy
Association, said he was surprised to learn that the pharmacists did not get
a hearing before the action was taken.