American Pain

Testing. Testing. One, two, three.

Sorry. You got the headphones plugged in?

Yes. This is the doctor. I am looking for a part time job

- Hi, this is Dianna with... - It's a little simple...

...medical field. You guys want to fuck around?

You're going to fucking need pain management. I walked out...

You make a lot more money doing this than you do doing plastic surgery.

My doctors average about $1.8 million a year.

Oh, my god. That's great, Chris.

They're in the house.

Baby, you know I love you, right?

What do you want me to do?

Why are you fucked?

You just need to relax, Chris

and you need to think of a fucking plan.

But you need to think of something

and killing yourself is not the answer.

You cannot leave me here by my fucking self

to deal with your dirt.

This was the cause of our epidemic in this country.

Florida was the epicenter, and the biggest ones in the business

were the George brothers at American Pain.

The George brothers did not start the opioid crisis.

But they sure as hell poured gasoline on the fire.

They became the largest street level distribution group

operating in the entire United States.

Nobody put more pills on the streets than they did.

Nobody.

They created a blueprint for how this is to be done

and they were operating in broad daylight.

The scale of this enterprise, I mean, it was enormous.

You had addicts streaming in from all over the country

thousands of miles

just to come to Florida to get drugs.

When you see what's going on inside that clinic

your jaw just falls to the floor.

I'd been on the job as a special agent for over 20 years

and I've seen a lot of crazy.

But this was just batshit crazy.

You couldn't make up the stuff that happened in this investigation.

Strippers and white supremacists running medical facilities.

MRIs in the back of a strip club.

Criminal operations coming in from Appalachia.

Doctors carrying guns under their lab coats.

Only in America.

It was 1980. She gained a lot of weight.

The doctor said, "You're getting too big."

They didn't realize that there were twins.

You know, they showed you those ultrasounds.

They didn't look like anything to me.

We moved to Wellington.

I had a lot of success in the building industry.

Wellington is more upscale than a lot of communities.

It's really known for horses and polo.

Prince Charles played polo in Wellington.

I mean, there have been some famous people.

It was a great place for them to grow up.

There were lots of kids, lots of families.

We had four wheelers and go karts and all those sorts of things.

Their sibling bond was so close.

One would say something

and before he finished, the other one would laugh.

And I'd say, "Why are you laughing?

He didn't..." Y'know, And he'd say

"Well, I know what he's gonna say."

I had them doing pushups when they were little.

I mean, we stressed exercise.

They were great tennis players, tremendous athletes.

And they were on the math team.

They won Palm Beach County Mathematics Contest.

Along with another kid that's in prison

with them called Theo.

Chris and Jeff were about eight or nine years old

when their mother and I got divorced.

I met Chris and Jeff's mother in '89.

And I early on noticed that they were a little difficult.

They were out in a wooded area

and somehow they started a brushfire

which actually turned into a small forest fire.

It was sufficient that the fire department had to be called

and were there for a day or two putting it out.

Yeah, I wasn't real keen on that

especially because I was a firefighter.

They ended up getting community service for it

nothing major.

They couldn't be together more than five minutes without fighting

and they couldn't be apart more than five minutes

without wondering where the other one was.

It was like a love/hate at the same time.

Although they competed against each other

you did not want to separate them.

If you picked on one, you picked on two.

Chris and Jeff played hockey.

Denice said, "I'm not going anymore"

because the parents sitting in the stands with us

started complaining about the boys.

Stay right there. Drew, come with me.

Get off, you. Goodbye.

Some parents got very mad with them.

Off...

They didn't understand the twin thing and I had to explain it to them.

With them, it wasn't always a relaxing time.

For sure.

Their father usually would get an attorney or whatever for them

who would get them off with sometimes nothing more than community service.

So they really never had to pay the price for any of their antics.

Their father told them the police were stupid

'cause if they were smart, they'd be making more money

I think they just thought they were smarter than everybody else

and they could get away with everything.

I sort of guessed it when I started seeing them bulk up.

And when I confronted them, I was like

"Don't you know how bad this stuff is for you?"

And they were just, "Oh, no, no, we get the good stuff."

On some discussion board on the internet

I found somebody in Yugoslavia

that I could Western Union money to.

They'd put the steroids in, like, VCR tapes.

I would use some of them, me and my brother

and then sell some of them to my friends.

The names they were shipped to were always fake names.

I had them shipped to a local business in West Palm Beach

but this time, I went and picked up the package and I was walking out.

All the agents, you know, came and arrested me.

It was his first felony offense.

Chris got the jail that let you out to go to work and then come back.

And he would come to work for me at Majestic.

We were building 100 homes at a time, a $40 million business.

We put a lot of pride into the business

and Chris carried that pride with him.

I took a job working for Chris and Jeff's father.

Me and him became pretty good buddies.

We were both into the same type of things.

Mosh pits

just banging and elbowing and kneeing and...

having fun redneck style, I guess.

Emerald City is just, you know, your standard strip club.

Chris would show up with his $500 in singles

pretty much every night to see her.

I came to Florida when I was about 19.

New Hampshire was no good for me.

Everyone's hooked on something there. That's why I ran away.

He was big, he was handsome, had an expensive car

and sounds like he's fun.

We spent the night, and it was, you know, ever since then.

From that moment on, they were never apart.

Here comes my posse right now!

So, our contractor this week is John George.

We did a TV show, Extreme Home Makeover.

Chris and Jeff both worked on that house.

That was the height of Majestic Homes.

The market was red hot.

And then, of course, you had 2007 to 2008

a catastrophe.

To see it collapse was sad.

I had no idea he was even a twin till I saw his brother.

Like, how do you leave that out?

Isn't that weird?

- This call is from... - Jeff.

An inmate at a federal prison.

South Beach Rejuvenation was a basically

a front for illegal steroid clinic.

It's telemedicine for steroids. I was a patient.

You would get blood test done and you were automatically approved.

I don't even think the doctor looked at it.

You would get a list of pretty much any anabolic steroid under the sun.

And two days later, you got a box of rigs

and all the steroids you wanted just came right to your house.

I was looking to buy competitors to expand South Beach Rejuvenation.

And Dr. Overstreet had a good little setup in Miami.

Dr. Overstreet, he's the one who brought the pain clinics

to Chris and Jeff's attention.

He told Jeff the big money was at the pain clinics.

Anything to do with money perks Chris and Jeff's interest.

For a doctor, he was young, at 38 years old.

He was like a bohemian type guy.

Dr. Overstreet absolutely just wanted to make a quick buck.

He wasn't trying to cure cancer.

He was pretty much just content doing what he did

come in and work in his flip flops and Bahama shirt

with a medical coat over top.

We decided to become 50/50 partners with Dr. Overstreet.

My brother and I were equal partners

and we each had a responsibility to head up one office at first.

We walked down to the tax collector's office

gave him $36 a name

basically gave us a license to deal drugs.

No questions asked.

I had no idea.

I thought it was going to be like, a regular doctor's office.

Elevator music playing and a couple people sitting out there

not a line all the way down the street.

The very first day, I was like, "Goddamn, man

we're not even open yet and there's people waiting."

They're scratching their neck, drinking Mountain Dews

and smoking cigarettes.

It kind of reminded me a bit of a trap house, you know?

I was 23 at the time. I owned half of a grow house.

I was selling kilos of cocaine.

I was doing all kinds of crazy dumb shit.