Three nurse practitioners have been sentenced for their roles in prescribing massive quantities of opioids from pill mills in Knoxville, Tennessee, representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.
In a press release, Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt with the DOJ’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee J. Douglas Overbey, and FBI Special Agent in Charge Joseph Carrico said that Cynthia Clemons, Courtney Newman, and Holli Carmichael Womack were sentenced by U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Varlan after being found guilty by a jury of using drug-involved premises for the purposes of distributing opioid narcotics.
Clemons was sentenced to 42 months in prison, and Newman was sentenced to 40 months in prison. Womack was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
At trial, prosecutors claimed Clemons, Newman, and Womack prescribed millions of oxycodone, oxymorphone, and morphine pills, from four separate clinics in Tennessee, generating more than $21 million in revenue. The jury found enough proof to determine the clinics were, in fact, pill mills and that most of the patients at these clinics were opioid addicts.
Clemons’, Newman’s and Womack’s sentencing is part of a larger sweeping prosecution that has resulted in approximately 140 convictions so far, officials said, the result of a comprehensive investigation by the DOJ in Tennessee and the FBI High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, comprised of investigators assigned to the task force by the Loudon County Sheriff’s Office, Knoxville Police Department, Blount County Sheriff’s Office, Roane County Sheriff’s Office, Harriman Police Department, and Clinton Police Department.