Frank H. Bynes, Jr, MD, a 70 y/o internal medicine doctor in Savannah GA, was sentenced to 20 years in prison (probably a life sentence unless we do something) on Valentine’s Day for prescribing legal opioids to established medical patients with pain. In contrast to this, in Orlando, FL, large-scale drug trafficker Sebastian Denton Zayas was sentenced to only 10 years, 10 months, with 360 kg of cocaine in his possession.

Dr. Bynes was found guilty in October 2019 on 13 counts of unlawful dispensation of controlled substances and three counts of health care fraud.

At his sentencing, the corrupt court stated that he “contributed substantially to the opioid crises by writing prescriptions for nearly five million doses of controlled substances during a three-year period.” This just goes to show how the court is in the pocket of the DOJ, or else the judge didn’t pass math. According to the DOJ press release following the indictment, they listed him as having 1800 patients, who were giving 51,329 prescriptions over 3 years, or 4.6 million pills/patches. When you work those numbers out, that isn’t even 1 prescription per patient per month for controlled substances, and only 70 pills per month. Since one of the protocols he was accused of was to prescribe a short-acting opioid with Soma and Xanax, each possibly taken 3-4x/day, that protocol alone would be for 300-400 pills per month. No way were the numbers they spouted in their indictment anywhere near a concerning number. The judge just showed his bias against physicians because of the money confiscated.

His trial only lasted 3 ½ days. Looks like this was a slam/dunk for the rogue Department of Justice. The government propaganda used against him was that he

• Operated a “pill mill” writing prescriptions for massive quantities of controlled substances.
• Prescribed to some people who he knew had suffered an overdose.
• Prescribed to a large number of patients
• Prescribed to patients he knew were addicted.
• Wrote prescriptions for the government-created term “holy trinity”
• Accepted payment in cash for visits.

In order to prejudice the jury from the first minute the indictment was read, it was filled with propagandizing terms that are actually fake, but effective:

• “purportedly worked as an internal medicine physician”
• “wrote massive numbers of prescription narcotics and other controlled substances, including a
• cocktail of, opioids, benzodiazepines, and Soma, commonly known as the “Holy Trinity,” a high-risk combination because of the risk of overdose or death.
• Medicaid paid for these prescriptions unlawfully written by Bynes.”
• “knowingly and intentionally distributed and dispensed controlled substances that were not prescribed for a legitimate medical purpose and which were not distribute and dispensed in the usual course of professional practice”
• Planting false information in the jurists head that the patients were addicts by stating he didn’t refer the patients to a specialist for addiction counseling.

The indictment of Dr. Bynes was cookie-cutter, used by every US Attorney in every district in the country and can be found HERE.

Dr. Bynes took Medicare and Medicaid patients, so accepting payment in cash for uninsured patients simply shows he was a compassionate, caring physician. Also, the “holy trinity” prescriptions were primarily for his Medicare patients. Since this trio of medications has been an established protocol for probably 20 years, it would be cruel and unusual punishment to pull these patients off of these medications simply because the government now uses the combination as a means to attack legitimate physicians. Physicians with Dr. Bynes’s experience (43 years), know how to prescribe these medications safely, and no US Attorney has the right or education to second-guess the doctor’s decision. This is explained in great detail in the new book exposing the illegal attacks on medical professionals by Ruth Borel, RN, PhD, American Agony. She calls the corrupt government officials “microcephalics”. For those non-medical people reading this, that converts to “pea-brains”.

The prosecution stated that Dr. Bynes prescribed the regimen more frequently to Medicare patients than any other physician in the country. My guess is that, being close to Florida, elderly patients traveled to him for their standard medications they had been on for years, due to being cut off by the illegal attacks on Florida doctors. So after the forced closing of his office, 1800 patients on medications that are dangerous when stopped abruptly are suddenly cut off with no one willing to prescribe them. A study needs to be done on the deaths of these patients after the office closure.

On his conviction back in October, U.S. Attorney Bobby L. Christine made the usual propagandizing statements to spread the opiaphobia created by the government just to get convictions like this.

“countless individuals suffering because of the products of his illegal pill mill, including cocktails of opioids and other controlled substances, which he distributed to feed the addictions of people who were supposed to be in his care,”

and

“Medical professionals who violate their oaths and ethics while violating the law will find no safe haven in the Southern District, and we will be relentless in shutting down these white-coated drug dealers.”

The term “white-coated drug dealers” is a DOJ creation in order to make the naïve public believe their illegal use of the Controlled Substance Act (CSA) against doctors is legal. But the CSA states that as long as the doctor is treating a patient, they are exempt. It also states that only the doctor can determine legitimate medical practice. So how can these pea-brained, criminal US Attorneys practice medicine without a license and not spend their next 20 years in a prison cell? Is America this naïve? You bet she is, and we need to change that.

The REAL criminals in this case are:

• Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions who orchestrated the attacks on 165 Georgia medical professionals in June, 2018. Make sure Sessions does not get back into the Senate.
• DHHS Secretary Alex M. Azar II, co-conspirator in the June, 2018 attacks on legitimate medical practitioners for money instead of protecting the welfare of 1/3 of Americans with pain.
• S. Attorney Bobby L. Christine, for prosecuting an innocent physician using laws illegally, stating he “will swap his white coat for a prison jumpsuit.”
• Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr creating the false “public health epidemic” by closing down legitimate medical practices and forcing legitimate pain patients to the street for self-medication, or suicide. Just the idea of all of those Medicare patients suddenly forced cold-turkey off their Xanax that they’ve probably been on since the 1990’s makes me shudder. Oh, but the deaths of Medicare patients is one of the government’s goals in these attacks.
• Robert J. Murphy, the DEA Special Agent “it’s about greed”. He’s right—it is about greed—the greed of the DOJ for forfeiture money, jobs, bonuses. His statement: “The dispensing of addictive prescription pain medication under the guise of a licensed medical professional’s care” shows the length that the rogue DOJ will take. Prescribing pain medicine is the JOB of a licensed medical professional. It’s the guise of an uneducated DEA agent who possibly didn’t even finish high school but has the gall to determine “legitimate medical care” that is a crime.
• Derrick L. Jackson, HHS-OIG. DHHS is supposed to be working FOR patients, not against them.
• Cynthia A. Bruce, Defense Criminal Investigative Service for throwing Dr. Bynes’s military patients into the automatic diagnosis of “addict”. That’s practicing medicine without a license.
• Everett Ragan, Director of the Chatham-Savannah Counter Narcotics Team (CNT), forcing legitimate patients on to the street for illegal drugs.
• Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Thomas Clarkson

According to the CDC, approximately 115 Americans die every day of an opioid-related overdose. But when those death certificates are examined, most are due to illicit opioids, not prescriptions.

Title 21 §1306.4 states “(a) A prescription for a controlled substance to be effective must be issued for a legitimate medical purpose by an individual practitioner acting in the usual course of his professional practice.

This statement exempts physicians writing scripts for their patients. It does NOT put them in the crosshairs of the DEA gun which is supposed to be used against illegal, illicit distribution of controlled substances, such as that being done by cocaine dealer Sebastian Zayas above.

For the government to throw in the 2 words “only if” in front, and then try to evaluate a practitioner’s medical note in the patient’s chart is gross government overreach, and not in the intent of the CSA.

Then they try to tie in Medicaid fraud into the legitimate prescriptions written by Dr. Bynes, so that they can then claim all the monies claimed by him since 2015. And they don’t just claim what was paid—they claim what he charged. That is always more than Medicaid pays because it is also the same amount charged to private insurance which pays considerably more than Medicaid. For example, in my day, Medicaid only paid $35 for something private insurance paid $75 for, so you have to charge $75. That means Medicaid is raking in $40 per charge that they never even paid. This is an illegal way now, that the government is making money off of charging innocent doctors with fraud, and needs to be stopped, or legislators need to be fired.

Not only collecting money from him for those prescriptions that he didn’t even get paid for, the government went after the pharmacies that filled his prescriptions. And rather than fight, the pharmacies/pharmacists who filled his legal prescriptions decided to cave and pay the government what they charged:

• Janice Ann Colter of Darien Pharmacy agreed to a judgement of $3.1 million.
• Wilton “Clint” Meeks, III of Liberty Square Pharmacy agreed to pay $150,000.
• John S. Townsend of Ludowici Drugs agreed to pay $55,000.

With the conviction, Dr. Byrnes forfeited everything he owned, as well as the money confiscated in the clinic at the time of the raid, ($11,239)

In addition, the judge ordered him to pay restitution of $615,145.06 for the prescriptions he wrote for the 2 Medicaid patients, but he also included payments to Medicare and Tricare, even though neither of those insurances were involved in the indictment.

Doctors, pharmacists and patients in this country should be aghast at what the DOJ is doing. How can innocent doctors like this be convicted for doing their job? And then raking in the money from innocent pharmacists to avoid going to court, for filling legitimate prescriptions. This illegal, rogue activity by the Department of Justice has got to stop. When will you have enough? When it is someone you love forced to the street for self-treatment?

Everyone reading this post should send a copy of it to their legislator, plus all of the legislators of color, asking them to change H. Res 747 to a bill, pass it, and Do Away With The CSA!

Addendum:

At the age of 70, Dr. Bynes was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

To end these attacks, restore pain management, and provide compensation to all the families that have been destroyed by government overreach, we must get the Controlled Substance Act repealed.  Join Doctorsofcourage to get that done. Learn what we teach and spread the word.  NO DRUG CAUSES ADDICTION!! Let’s end the War on Drugs, Doctors and Pain Patients, end the black market, solve the southern border crisis, and restore proper pain management.  It CAN be done!                                        

Addendum:

I have failed in my mission to end these attacks on doctors and pain patients. Through John Bevere’s book The Bait of Satan, I have figured out why—my lack of forgiveness to those who attacked me. As in Mark 11: 24-26:

Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.

And when you do not do the will of the Father, you are estranged from him and he will ignore you.  So we all must forgive the agents who attacked us in order for things to be made right through any of our works.

Jesus said

“Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

But we cannot lay down our lives for God unless we know Him well enough to trust Him. We must have the assurance that He would never do anything to harm us. He always looks out for what He knows is in our best interest. As a nation, those of us suffering from these attacks must understand that we are serving as God’s messengers of love.  We must forgive those who persecute us and love them instead, following God’s will for us. Then and only then will we see fruits from our labor.

So I hope that everyone who has suffered from what happened to Dr. Bynes can trust the Lord, forgive those who have hurt you, and help bring this country back to the God-fearing country that our forefathers founded. Then, and only then, can you be a part of the effort to stop these attacks. I look forward to that day.