MUSKEGON (WOOD) -- A doctor who once served as a state representative is under federal investigation, suspected of writing prescriptions from his car to known drug users and dealers.
In an emergency order, the state in July summarily suspended the medical license of Dr. Paul DeWeese, who has run pain, addiction and neuropathy clinics in Grand Rapids, Flint and Lansing.
That followed a raid in June by FBI agents of his clinic in Lansing -- the Lansing Chronic Pain Clinic and Opioid Recovery Center.
Records show the investigation started after workers at a medical marijuana clinic in Muskegon called the state to report their suspicions about DeWeese, who was working there part-time to certify medical marijuana patients. He also, for a short time, treated addicts at the clinic.
While DeWeese, 60, of Holt, has not been charged, the allegations were detailed in an FBI search warrant affidavit. DeWeese was a state representative from 1998 to 2003 for the Lansing area.
Target 8 tracked down DeWeese in July but he refused to comment. However, a spokesman on Monday denied any wrongdoing.
In the affidavit, the FBI said it had probable cause to believe DeWeese was distributing controlled substances and engaged in health care fraud and falsification of health-care records.
The FBI alleged that DeWeese drove as far north as Escanaba and Iron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula to write prescriptions of Buprenorphine, a drug meant to help heroin addicts.
'POLLUTING OUR STREETS WITH JUNKIES'
In Escanaba, police say he was a major supplier of the prescription drug.
"Dr. DeWeese has been polluting our city with junkies," an Escanaba police detective recently wrote in an email to federal investigators.
DeWeese had DEA authorization to prescribe buprenorphine products to up to 100 "drug-addicted" patients at a time, records show.
Witnesses in Escanaba told the feds he often charged $150 for the in-car prescriptions -- without an examination, without checking medical histories and without knowing how the pills would mix with other meds, according to the search warrant affidavit.
One Escanaba patient told the FBI about getting a prescription without ever meeting DeWeese.
Instead, the patient said, the doctor prescribed it after a phone call. The patient paid $200 for that call, the FBI alleged.
"It's a very lucrative enterprise for both the physician that's prescribing and also the person who gets the prescription and comes out here and acts like a middle person and sells it to other users or abusers out on the streets," Delta County Prosecutor Philip Strom told Target 8.
A former DeWeese patient told police that DeWeese stayed with patients during his trips to Escanaba and was with patients while they were "shooting up" and would give the patient anything they requested, the FBI wrote in its affidavit.
In Iron Mountain, a witness told federal agents, DeWeese was among the doctors who wrote the prescriptions from a parking lot near a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
The feds alleged he also wrote them from a McDonald's parking lot in Grand Haven and a parking lot in Muskegon.
'JUST GO TO THE DOCTOR'
"The drug dealer's not the bad guy standing on the front of the liquor store anymore that you go give some money to and go sneak away," said Cory Mulhern, of Escanaba, who described himself as a former Buprenorphine addict. "You just go to the doctor. The doctor's the drug dealer."
Drug users often cook Buprenorphine pills in spoons, then shoot it up.
"Around here it's basically used for a drug itself, you know. The results are basically just like a heroin high," Mulhern said.
DeWeese is suspected of prescribing it to dealers who would turn around and sell it on the streets for up to $60 a pill, the feds say.
Mulhern says he bought his pills from patients of DeWeese. He was one of 13 caught in a sting selling the pills on the streets.
"Everybody was basically in a circle together. It's a small town and everybody knows everybody, so it was never anything hard to find," Mulhern said.
Four of the 13 were identified in the affidavit as patients of DeWeese.
One patient, identified only as TE, told police he drove to Lansing once a month for an appointment with DeWeese, for $150 a visit, then filled his prescription at a nearby pharmacy.
Records show he was a regular patient from July 2014 to March 2015, getting prescriptions for Buprenorphine and Ritalin.
"TE advised that all he/she would have to do is tell DeWeese what he/she wanted and he/she got it," the FBI wrote.
When pharmacies in Escanaba stopped filling Buprenorphine prescriptions to stop what police called an epidemic, some patients drove to his clinic in Lansing then filled them at Lansing-area pharmacies, the feds said. Witnesses said he warned them to go to different pharmacies so they wouldn't raise "red flags."
The FBI said it was "highly unusual and concerning -- and indicative of drug-seeking behavior" for patients to drive 375 miles from Escanaba to Lansing to get prescription drugs
DeWeese also allegedly arranged to ship the pills north.
"It is highly unusual for a physician or physician practice to regularly mail controlled substances to patients that reside hundreds of miles from the practice location," the FBI wrote.
"In light of pharmacies' efforts to curb the buprenophine problem in the Upper Peninsula, the timing of DeWeese's prescriptions and his subsequent shipments to to the UP demonstrates that DeWeese is providing controlled substances to patients by circumventing pharmacies that have refused to fill his prescriptions."
The impact in Escanaba was far-reaching.
Sources familiar with the investigation tell Target 8 that of the more than 40 children in the Escanaba area under the care of Child Protective Services for neglect or abuse, half had parents who were getting pills from DeWeese.
"Oh, it was bad," Mulhern said. "Honestly, it was really bad. Basically, everybody that I knew was doing it. People that I grew up with, people I knew from high school you never thought would do drugs were addicted to it."
"I've seen them sell everything they own, ruin their family life, all kinds of things."
THE MUSKEGON CONNECTION
It was DeWeese's work at a medical marijuana clinic in Muskegon that caught up to him. He certified patients at Diane's Compassionate Services for medical marijuana, but also started treating addicts.
Workers there say he wrote prescriptions even though they never saw him examining patients or checking medical records and that some patients were driving all the way from Escanaba to get prescriptions.
They say they also caught him writing a prescription in a nearby parking lot for a convicted drug dealer.
The owner complained a year ago to the state Attorney General, which started the investigation.
The FBI affidavit also alleges DeWeese targeted patients at the Red Cedar methadone clinic in Lansing, where he worked as medical director.
Paula Reeves, the director of Red Cedar, told the state DeWeese was sending some of the methadone clinics to his own office and prescribing "dangerous combinations of controlled substances" to them.
She also said he was living with some of Red Cedar's patients, even intimidating some.
Reeves said he was fired in March 2015.
DOCTOR'S SPOKESMAN: NO WRONGDOING
Antonio Manning, who identified himself as a spokesman for DeWeese, told Target 8 on Monday that the doctor denies allegations of wrongdoing. He denied writing prescriptions out of his car.
"The doctor has a good heart," Manning said, and his good deeds are being misunderstood.
Manning said DeWeese was trying to help patients in Escanaba because no doctors in that area would.
Some of those patients, he said, "were bad apples," who were discharged from his practice after they either diverted the medication or broke other rules. He said DeWeese has discharged more than 200 patients since January for breaking rules.
"He's expected to be a physician and a police officer at the same time," Manning said.
He acknowledged DeWeese has paid for some patients' prescriptions, but only if they couldn't afford it, and said he's allowed some patients to live with him if they needed a place to stay.
"There are no sexual relationships with patients," Manning said.
DeWeese plans to ask for a state hearing to fight his suspension, according to Manning.