COLUMBUS, Ohio — Dr. Kevin B. Lake, 50, of New Albany, Ohio, is pleading guilty to turning his clinic, Columbus Southern Medical Center, into a full-scale pill mill that flooded the Midwest with oxycodone, hydrocodone, and Xanax — all under the thin veil of medical legitimacy. Between 2006 and 2013, Lake admitted to maintaining the clinic at 2912 South High Street as a criminal enterprise, where hundreds of addicts showed up daily for no-questions-asked prescriptions. At its peak, nearly 92 percent of patients walked out with controlled substances, a glaring red flag ignored as profits soared past $38 million.
Lake owned and operated the clinic through shell corporations and trusts designed to shield him from accountability. Court documents reveal he knowingly allowed doctors and staff to prescribe dangerous drugs without medical purpose, while personally pocketing the proceeds. He admitted to laundering more than $20 million from illicit patient payments and is now set to forfeit what remains of $29 million in seized assets after restitution. The DEA first raided the clinic in June 2010, but the operation continued — and so did Lake’s evasion tactics.
As federal pressure mounted, Lake stopped drawing a salary and instead filed fraudulent disability claims with two insurers, falsely claiming he could no longer work. The insurers saw through the scheme and paid only $18,000 before shutting him down. He then attempted to sell the clinic’s remaining assets to further distance himself from the wreckage of his criminal enterprise — but the feds had already traced the money trail from prescription pads to offshore-style laundering.
Lake also admitted to a parallel tax fraud operation that stripped more than $3.5 million from the U.S. Treasury. He paid himself over $90,000 between 2010 and 2013 through phantom rental agreements, pretending his personal home was used for corporate retreats. Those payments were never reported as income. He inflated charitable deductions on personal returns and filed false corporate filings claiming $7.4 million in fake equipment purchases from his own trust — then reported the transactions as capital gains to dodge higher tax rates.
The plea agreement, unsealed today, includes counts of maintaining a drug premises, tax evasion, and filing false corporate and individual tax returns. The charges were announced by a coalition of federal and state enforcers: Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the DOJ Tax Division; U.S. Attorney Benjamin C. Glassman; DEA Special Agent in Charge Timothy J. Plancon; IRS-CI Acting Special Agent in Charge Troy N. Stemen; U.S. Department of Labor OIG’s James Vanderberg; EBSA Regional Director Joe Rivers; Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine; BWC CEO Sarah Morrison; and Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs.
Lake is scheduled to enter his guilty plea today at 2 p.m. before U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson. Once a pillar of the local medical community, Lake now stands exposed as a ringleader in one of Ohio’s most brazen pill mill operations — a man who traded prescriptions for profit and counted his millions while addicts died in the streets.
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Key Facts
- State: Ohio
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Drug Trafficking|Fraud & Financial Crimes|White Collar Crime
- Source: Official Source ↗
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