Five Charged in Detroit 'Cash for Pills' Opioid Clinic Scheme

Federal prosecutors in Detroit unsealed an indictment Thursday charging five people, including three physicians, with operating fraudulent "cash only" clinics that sold opioid prescriptions to anyone who could pay and knew whom to name at the front desk. The scheme ran from 2018 through September 2024, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, and produced prescriptions for more than 2.4 million dosage units of Schedule II controlled substances with a street value above $14.6 million.

Charged are Clara Wilkerson, 65, formerly of Bloomfield Hills, whom the Detroit News identifies as a former Detroit television reporter; Latanya Wallace-Hardiman, 53, of Detroit; Dr. Luis Rodriguez, 53, now of Orlando, Florida; Dr. Nayantara Jnananand, 59, of Plymouth; and Dr. Prashanti Franklin, 49, of Okemos. ClickOnDetroit reported the five face more than 30 federal counts, including conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances, unlawful distribution and money laundering.

How the clinics worked

Prosecutors say Wilkerson used two companies she controlled, CRW Worldwide LLC and CRW Development Inc., to recruit and pay doctors to write prescriptions at medical offices that existed mainly to move pills. Wallace-Hardiman owned and operated one of them, the Woodward Boulevard Medical Building in Detroit, according to the indictment.

The business model was cash and nothing else. Patients paid between $250 and $500 for a visit that ended with a prescription for oxycodone 30 milligram tablets, oxymorphone 40 milligram tablets sold as Opana, hydrocodone-acetaminophen compounds sold as Norco, or oxycodone-acetaminophen 10-325 tablets sold as Percocet — drugs the U.S. Attorney's Office describes as carrying a high street value. The clinic refused insurance, and if a patient could not fill a prescription at a pharmacy, staff issued a credit so the next visit would not cost anything.

New patients were screened at the door. Every arrival was asked "who sent you," and anyone who could not name a trusted marketer or employee was turned away with the explanation that the clinic was not accepting new patients. At times, recruiters paid patients $100 or more to see a doctor, covered the $500 office fee and the pharmacy copayment themselves, took possession of the pills and sold them.

Two clinics, two sets of numbers

The indictment divides the alleged prescribing into two sets of figures. Between 2021 and 2024, doctors at Woodward Boulevard issued prescriptions for more than 500,000 dosage units of Schedule II substances worth over $4.6 million on the street market. At a second clinic, P & A Aftercare, prescriptions for more than 1.9 million dosage units were worth more than $10 million.

"Drug diversion schemes keep evolving as unscrupulous individuals try to sell profitable opiate prescriptions without getting caught," U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon said in the announcement. "Not billing insurance companies will not save you from prosecution. Prescribers who work at 'cash only' clinics are fueling the illegal street market."

The money trail is the case

Wilkerson and Wallace-Hardiman also face a money-laundering conspiracy and specific money-laundering counts tied to the cash the clinics collected. Prosecutors say the money was deposited and then used to promote the scheme by paying doctors for prescriptions, with additional transactions involving deposits and withdrawals above $10,000 in a single day.

"Drug diversion schemes are driven by profit, and that money leaves a trail," said Todd Strom, acting special agent in charge of the Detroit field office of IRS Criminal Investigation. "IRS-CI special agents are experts at unwinding complicated financial paths and exposing the financial framework that supports criminal activity."

The Drug Enforcement Administration's special agent in charge in Detroit, identified in the announcement only as Dixon, said prescribers who exploit their professional authority to move pills will be held accountable. The maximum penalty for the drug conspiracy and each related drug offense is 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine per count; the money-laundering conspiracy and promotion counts carry the same maximums. Any sentence would be set by a judge under the federal sentencing guidelines.

What the indictment does not settle

The announcement gave no further specifics on the counts against Franklin, and no attorney for any of the five was identified in the materials released Thursday. None of the allegations has been tested at trial, and the case now moves into a pretrial phase that will determine how much of the prescribing data reaches a courtroom.

For patients, the indictment describes a supply channel that never touched a pharmacy benefit: no insurer was billed, so no claims data flagged the volume, and the only record was cash on a counter. Prosecutors say the clinics depended on that gap, and that the same gap is why the case was built from bank records and cooperating witnesses rather than from insurance audits.

People who need treatment for opioid addiction can find medication-assisted treatment through licensed providers, where buprenorphine and methadone are dispensed under a prescription and a treatment plan rather than at a cash window.