Doctor sentenced to prison for selling millions in prescription drugs

A doctor who admitted to selling millions in prescription pills at two Middle Georgia clinics for more than a decade was sentenced Tuesday to serve 100 months - or 8.3 years - in prison.

George Mack Bird III, 59, also was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Dublin to 36 months of supervised release after prison and fined $20,000, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia.

Bird pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to commit money laundering, the release said.

A federal indictment says Bird, a gynecologist, had operated a pill mill out of his Women’s Health medical clinic in Eastman — about an hour southeast of Macon — and his New York Weight Lost diet clinic in Dublin from early January 2000 to early June 2015.

Bird admitted the offices sold and prescribed drugs including the opiate hydrocodone, along with alprazolam, also known as Xanax; carisoprodol, also known as Soma, phentermine; also known as Adipex; and phendimetrazine, also known as Plegime, to customers who typically paid in cash and received no legitimate medical services, the release said.

In the years leading to his arrest in 2015 by the Oconee Drug Task Force, Bird increasingly delegated his patient care responsibilities to unqualified employees who used pre-signed prescription forms and pre-printed medical notes to give the appearance that Bird was performing examinations, the release said.

“Mack Bird could be the poster child for the opioid crisis in this country — a greedy, self-serving criminal who violated the law and his medical oath to enrich himself at the lifelong expense of the ‘patients’ he willingly enslaved to deadly addictions,” Bobby Christine, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, said in the news release. “The U.S. Attorney General has made it clear that battling opioid abuse is a priority, and this office will vigorously prosecute illegal drug dealers whether they are on a street corner or in a fancy office.”

Christine also commended federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s Tactical Diversion Squad and the Oconee Drug Task Force, both of which investigated the case.

“Complicit doctors who over-prescribe prescription opioids often prey on patients who are addicted to these powerful medications,” said Robert Murphy, special agent in charge of the DEA Atlanta Field Division. “Some of these doctors operate under the guise of a stethoscope and white coat, which serves as a front for their legitimacy.”

As part of the plea agreement, Bird agreed to forfeit nearly $2.7 million seized assets that included bank and investment accounts and properties — including his home, the two clinics as well as farm land in Dodge County.

In November 2017, the Georgia Composite Medical Board suspended Bird’s medical license until his court case was resolved. Bird agreed not to practice medicine in Georgia.

This story was originally published September 18, 2018 at 2:56 PM.