Sylvia Hofstetter, Pill Mill Operation, Tennessee 2020

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - A federal jury returned a guilty verdict against four defendants for their roles in running "pill mills" in the Knoxville area, announced Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney J. Douglas Overbey of the Eastern District of Tennessee.

After five days of deliberation, a federal jury returned a guilty verdict against Sylvia Hofstetter, 55, of Miami, Florida, and Courtney Newman, 44, Cynthia Clemons, 47, and Holli Womack, a.k.a. "Holli Carmichael," 46, all of Knoxville, Tenn. The jury returned guilty verdicts against Hofstetter for a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) conspiracy, a drug conspiracy, money laundering, and maintaining drug-involved premises, and guilty verdicts against Newman, Clemons, and Womack for maintaining drug-involved premises.

The verdict follows a three-month trial presided over by United States District Judge Thomas A. Varlan in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Knoxville. The United States presented testimony from 55 witnesses throughout the trial, including former patients, employees, medical providers, and expert medical witnesses.

Defendant Hofstetter faces a term of up to 20 years in prison and a $1,000,000 fine. The remaining defendants face up to 20 years in prison and fines up to $500,000. Sentencing hearings are tentatively set for Newman in July 2020, Clemons and Womack in August 2020, and Hofstetter in September 2020.

The drug conspiracy involved the distribution of over 11 million tablets of oxycodone, oxymorphone, and morphine that generated over $21 million of clinic revenue, with a corresponding street value of $360 million. The conspiracy involved four separate clinics in Tennessee, which, the evidence showed, were essentially pill mills.

Before opening these pill mills in Tennessee, testimony established that Hofstetter worked at a Florida-based pill mill in Hollywood, Florida, which was raided by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in December 2010. Testimony revealed that law enforcement's crackdown on hundreds of pill mills in South Florida during that time-period precipitated the move to East Tennessee, where a large percentage of those clinics' opioid-addicted customers lived.

United States Attorney Overbey said, "This office appreciates the extremely hard work by the jury to reach this verdict. The verdict should demonstrate the dire consequences to individuals who participate in greedy schemes to make money and cause so many to suffer from the opioid crisis."

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edtn/pr/federal-jury-convicts-four-defendants-operating-knoxville-area-pill-mills