TAYLOR, Mich. – Police raided the clinic and the Oakland County mansion of a doctor who’s believed to be a major trafficker of pills throughout Michigan and beyond.
A 78-year-old doctor from West Bloomfield is believed to be one of the worst offenders of pill trafficking in the state. He’s accused of falsifying records, writing false prescriptions, and flooding the streets with opioids and painkillers.
His clinic on Telegraph Road in Taylor and his 21,000-square-foot home on Surria Court in West Bloomfield were both raided on Tuesday morning.
These raids came after four years of investigating by the Taylor Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration, LARA, and Blue Cross.
Police said people from across Michigan and Ohio went to the doctor for narcotics. There have been more than 50 overdoses in Taylor so far this year.
Taylor police Detective Jeff Adamisin, who has worked for four years on this case, said thousands of patients have gone to the doctor for pills.
“Not only here in the city of Taylor, but spanning the state of Michigan, even surrounding states, as well,” Adamisin said. “It’s just flooding the area of Metro Detroit, specifically, with controlled substances, with pills that are leading to pill diversions, pills being sold on the street, and then that’s causing overdoses and deaths.”
While he was briefing his team on the raids, Adamisin said the doctor returned home late Monday night and “hasn’t moved.” He said they planned to proceed with the search warrant even if the doctor was still at his home.
“Prescribing these pills without the legal medical proper reasoning to be prescribing them -- not only is that illegal, but that causes a huge issue with not only this city, not only this state -- but just the addiction and just the overdoses and the deaths that spin off from that is terrible,” Adamisin said.
So far, authorities have identified 16 bank accounts containing millions of dollars.
Local 4′s Shawn Ley joined Taylor police for the raid. The doctor had arrived at his clinic by the time police went inside.
The waiting room was packed as police entered the clinic. A few minutes later, the doctor was escorted out by officers.
“I’m shocked,” he told Shawn. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
You can see how Shawn followed along with this story all day in the videos below.
