Italian Nationals Prosecuted For Operating East Tennessee Pill Mills
Image Credit: Blount County Sheriff’s Office & zacharmstrong / CC
The Tennessee Conservative [By Rebecca Scott] –
Two Italian nationals have been prosecuted for operating pill mills in both East Tennessee and Florida.
Luca Sartini pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years and 10 months in prison, and Luigi Palma pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Both had been arrested in Rome, Italy in 2018 and extradited to Tennessee in 2020.
The men were responsible for opening two East Tennessee clinics and several Florida clinics that specialized in pain management.
These clinics did not accept any type of health insurance but, rather, charged patients $300 or more per visit out of pocket.
All told, Sartini and Palma personally made $2 million off of their clinics and generated a total of about $21 million.
In court, Palma is quoted as saying, “I take full responsibility for my actions. I was able to see [in] real life the struggle of people with drug addiction, and I know I was part of the problem.”
Many people have been prosecuted in the operation of pill mills that have contributed to the opioid epidemic in Tennessee.
Sylvia Hofstetter, who oversaw day-to-day operations of the clinics, was sentenced in 2020 for her role in running the pill mills belonging to Sartini and Palma, as well as another clinic she had secretly opened on her own.
Documents from her trial state that, “Pill mills owned and operated by Hofstetter and her co-defendants distributed over 11 million tablets of oxycodone, oxymorphone, and morphine that generated over $21 million in revenue, with a corresponding street value of $360 million.” The prosecutors in Hofstetter’s case called her “the biggest drug dealer to ever appear in an East Tennessee courtroom.”
Rebecca Scott is a Tennessee resident and reporter for The Tennessee Conservative. You can reach Rebecca at Rebecca@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
