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4-state crackdown nets prescription drug suspects

Phil Buck and Marlisa Goldsmith
KTHV-TV, Little Rock, Ark.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Federal agents conducted early morning raids Wednesday in Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, targeting doctors, pharmacies and pill mills in a crackdown on illegally diverted pharmaceuticals.

In Little Rock, six arrests were made Wednesday at the KJ Medical Clinic, including Dr. Jerry Reifeiss, prescribing physician. Four loaded weapons were found in the raid, authorities said.

"Sometimes life is rather difficult, but it will be straightened out," Reifeiss said as he was being taken into custody.

At Bowman Curve Pharmacy, agents arrested pharmacist Kristen Holland.

And Aaron Borengasser, formerly a physician's assistant with Artex Medical Clinic, was apprehended.

The DEA said it received reports from area Walgreens and Walmart pharmacies that they were seeing suspicious controlled substance prescriptions for hydrocodone and alprazolam, and a resulting investigation led to arrests.

During "Operation Pilluted," which the Drug Enforcement Administration launched in July 2014, 280 individuals have been charged with prescription drug crimes in the four states, including 94 federal defendants in five separate indictments, and 46 state defendants. Included in that total are four doctors, four nurses and five pharmacists, according to a release from the DEA.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, 140 have been charged in Arkansas as part of the initiative.

"The doctors and pharmacists arrested in Operation Pilluted are nothing more than drug traffickers who prey on the addiction of others while abandoning the Hippocratic Oath adhered to faithfully by thousands of doctors and pharmacists each day across this country," said DEA Special Agent in-Charge Keith Brown.

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