Three Birmingham-area doctors face charges stemming from a 15-month federal operation focused on reducing trafficking and abuse of pharmaceuticals.

Ernest Albert Claybon, 72, was arrested Wednesday morning on charges that he distributed methadone without a legitimate medical purpose. He runs a family medicine practice in Midfield.

On April 30, a federal grand jury indicted Claybon on five counts of distributing methadone "outside the scope of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose" between November 2014 and January 2015.

Peter Alan Lodewick appeared in federal court on Thursday, May 21, with his attorney, Jim Sturdivant. Lodewick is charged with issuing about 390 prescriptions to a group of pill-seekers. (Kent Faulk | kfaulk@al.com)

In a separate case, Peter Alan Lodewick, 73, was charged with assisting someone else in acquiring the narcotic painkiller oxycodone by "misrepresentation, fraud, forgery, deception and subterfuge."

Lodewick, who is a physician at Lodewick Diabetes Center on Montclair Road in Birmingham, has entered a plea agreement with the government. In the filing, Lodewick acknowledged the charges against him and stated his intention to plead guilty.

According to Lodewick's plea agreement, he issued about 390 prescriptions for controlled substances between January 2013 and December 2014 to a group of pill-seekers, led by the doctor's housekeeper.

In May 2013, Lodewick learned that three people were pharmacy-shopping. He wrote letters terminating their physician-patient relationship, but continued to write them opiate prescriptions, the plea agreement states.

Lodewick's attorney, Jim Sturdivant, said that Lodewick's situation "is not one where he was arrested as part of some sort of operation" and that it was agreed to long ago.

Lodewick voluntarily surrendered his DEA registration, ending his ability to prescribe controlled substances, in January.

A third physician - Muhammad Wasim Ali - was indicted last month after being accused of running a "pill mill" at his Jasper neurology and pain clinic.

Ali, 50, was charged with illegally distributing narcotic painkillers for other than legitimate medical purposes. Ali is the owner of Walker Rural Health Care/Jasper Neurological Care Clinic, which was raided by DEA agents on March 27.

At a preliminary hearing, testimony showed Ali prescribed to patients an average of 52 schedule II narcotics - hydrocodone, oxycodone, methadone or morphine - a day, putting him in the top 1 percent of Alabama physicians dispensing those controlled medications.

The charges were filed as part of the DEA's Operation Pilluted, a 15-month investigation that resulted in arrests, charges and raids in four Southern states - Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

More than 140 people were arrested before Wednesday's raids and DEA agents expected to make another 170 arrests.

U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, DEA Assistant Special Agent in Charge Clay A. Morris and Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Secretary Spencer Collier announced the charges this week.

"Alabama leads the nation in the number of per capita prescriptions for opioid painkillers, which are extremely addictive and often abused," Vance said. "The proper use of these drugs for pain management is important, but their abuse is deadly. Prescription-drug abusers often shift to heroin abuse and this tragic trend contributes to our epidemic overdose death rates. We must ensure that doctors don't turn into illegal drug dealers."

"Prescription drug abuse is the fasting-growing drug problem in the country," Morris said. "We trust our doctors to heal our bodies, not poison our communities. We will not tolerate or accept illegal prescribing, and we will bring justice to those who condone or participate in this type of practice," he said.

DEA, ALEA and Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation, investigated the cases being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Alabama.