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Federal, State, Local Officers Search Doctors Office

1,555 views · Published 21 June 2012 · 2:24 · Indexed 6 November 2026

Channel: WTVC NewsChannel 9 · 2012 · News & Politics

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by John PlessFederal D.E.A. agents teamed up with the T.B.I., Chattanooga and Hamilton County officers at Dr. Jerome Sherard's Holzclaw Avenue office Wednesday morning.  With a federal search warrant in hand they were looking for paperwork and electronic files that explain what Dr. Sherard and his staff have been doing.The swarm of blue attracts a lot of curious on-lookers like Lloyd Pullom."I just came from over the viaduct and I saw all the blue lights and just stopped to see what was going on," Pullom said.Dr. Sherard is a licensed pediatrician but police found adults visiting inside, just like we did on our previous visits. Some were patted down while others were taken into custody on warrants for unrelated charges.Dr. Sherard is not a board certified pain management specialist according to Tennessee state records but last year he worked with pain management clinics also known as "pill mills."People from several states came to the clinics with cash in hand. For about 00 they got a visit with a medical professional and prescriptions for pain killers like Oxycontin. Wendell Brown told us last June "I get pain meds that normal doctors just won't give you."Faith Blake and her mother Barbara Lang, also known as Aunt Bee, ran the clinics that soon closed only to reopen in new locations with new names. Employees said the clinics raked in 5,000 or more a day. Blake told us Dr. Sherard wrote prescriptions for her clients but that relationship ended a few weeks after NewsChannel 9 broadcast stories about the changing locations.When Lang's clinic reopened as the Primary Care and Pain Clinic on Brainerd Road employee Kevin Burgess said "it's different than the other business because she's more organized, got her act together and what I know about her personally is she loves the Lord."A week after Primary Care opened it closed because of the attention and a dispute with the a dentist who leased the space to Lang.When the Elite Care clinic on Highway 58 suddenly closed clients who paid cash were told to come back the next day to get their prescriptions but found the doors locked and "security" personnel cussing at them.Client David Frazier was enraged and told us "at this point I want to go and start some F------ chaos, probably going to start busting in some windows or something because I'm pretty upset right now, I'm about to flip the script, somebody just robbed me blind, dude."While some clients have legitimate pain issues police said most of the pain clinic clients wanted the drugs for their own addictions and to sell on the street level.Dr. Sherard has not been charged with a crime. Investigators said they'll examine the evidence seized from his office in the coming weeks and depending on what they find they could present a case to a federal grand jury.

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