Prisoner Of Pain

How One Man's Quest For Pain Relief Landed Him In Jail

(CBS) 
What did he do to obtain his medication?

"My doctor in New Jersey, who had been with me for almost seven years, agreed to continue the care," says Paey.

Paey’s doctor in New Jersey, Stephen Nurkiewicz, agreed to mail and fax prescriptions to him in Florida. To ensure that Richard would never run out of pills — his worst nightmare — Nurkiewicz left some of the prescriptions undated.

But Paey’s frequent refills drew the attention of law enforcement. Florida has seen a dramatic increase in the sale of black market painkillers. Convinced that Paey might have been re-selling the drugs, local police placed him under surveillance. After two months, they made their bust.

"They had guns and ski masks and, like, five, six people ran into the house and half of them took the kids and my mother in law. And the other one grabbed me," says Linda Paey. "And Rich kept on saying, 'Please, call my doctor. Can you call my doctor?' You know? 'Everything's fine. Call my doctor.' And they said they already have."

Indeed they had. The doctor was originally a suspect.

In interviews with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Nurkiewicz at first supported Paey and admitted mailing him undated prescriptions and, when pharmacists called, he verified the prescriptions.

But when he was later shown evidence that Paey had filled 200 prescriptions over a two year period for 18,000 pills, he then stated that all of the prescriptions were forgeries, including some he had originally verified to pharmacists. He was no longer a suspect, instead becoming a witness for the prosecution.

Nurkiewicz would not talk to 60 Minutes.

But state prosecutor Scott Andringa did talk, and while he acknowledges that Nurkiewicz’s statements were “inconsistent and contradictory,” he also says Richard Paey took advantage of his doctor’s inattention to detail.

"In Richard Paey's room, all over his room, there were the raw materials to make prescriptions," says Andringa. "They found a lot of documents that suggested forging prescriptions, copying prescriptions, in order to create new blank prescriptions."

In addition to the blank prescriptions, Andringa says police also found a copy machine, a doctor’s stamp and Nurkiewicz’s DEA number written in Paey’s address book.

"It's a crime to forge prescriptions, which is what he did, and it's a crime to use a forged prescription that you stole in order to get drugs from a pharmacy, which is what he did," Andringa says.

Despite the evidence, Paey continues to deny any wrongdoing. On the accusation of selling, he says he never sold any drugs.

"They put my wife and I, my family, under surveillance for three months," says Paey. "During that three month period, they followed us to church. They followed my wife to work. They interviewed my neighbors. This went on for three months. They found nothing."

But apparently they found 60 bottles of pills in Paey's home.

"They found 60 empty bottles, sir," Paey says.

Paey says he never sold any pills. "No, Mr. Safer, I was in such pain, they were so hard to get. I was a buyer in a sense. I mean, I wasn't a seller."

But Andringa says Paey couldn’t possibly have taken all of the pills he obtained — an amount that would require him to consume 25 pills a day.

"One pill every hour, every day, for two years, with assuming he didn't sleep. If he slept for any period of time during that two-year period, he'd have to take more," he says.

Did Andringa assume at the beginning that Paey was selling drugs?

"There was certainly an implication that he was selling drugs," says Andringa.

"You did not present a shred of evidence that he sold a single pill," Safer says.

"Nobody saw him selling," says Andringa. "The evidence suggests it, but it doesn't prove it conclusively. But it is a reasonable inference from the facts that he was selling them, because no person can consume all these pills."