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Pill Mill Sentences Reduced for Testimony

Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.
The Florida Channel
Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.

  The owners of the Tampa Bay Wellness Centre and affiliated VIP Pharmacy are testifying against each other and other pill mill doctors to get their own sentences reduced, The Tampa Tribune reports.

The clinic was known as the nation’s most active pill mill, seeing drug seekers from as far as Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky. The pharmacy dispensed more than 27 times the amount of oxycodone than that sold by the average Florida pharmacy, The Tribune reports.

Pharmacy owner Marco Beltran’s testimony against Wellness Centre doctor Ronald John Heromin could reduce his 15-year federal prison sentence, The Tribune reports.

Beltran’s co-defendants, Louis Fernandez Jr., his son Louis Fernandez III, and Kimberly Curtiss, all have had their sentences reduced in exchange for their cooperation, according to The Tribune.

Originally founded in December 2006 as an independent grassroots publication dedicated to coverage of health issues in Florida, Health News Florida was acquired by WUSF Public Media in September 2012.