Houston pastor accused of running pill mill

A 65-year-old Baptist minister and a board-certified physician are among four people who face organized crime charges after Houston police raided an inner-city pain clinic that police claim operated as a high-volume pill mill.

Pastor Bennit Ezell Hayes - the longtime minister of Gloryland Missionary Baptist Church - the physician and two clinic workers were indicted Aug. 10 and accused of "engaging in organized criminal activity" for allegedly illegally dispensing hundreds of thousands of controlled prescription pills at a clinic called the Southeast Brite Horizons Medical Center.

HPD Detective John Kowal, a specialist in prescription drug investigations, said officers recovered records that showed that 3,100 prescriptions for controlled drugs had been dispensed at the clinic during the first five months of 2012 - a rate of about 600 each month.

But Hayes, who sat for a brief interview as he prepared for a church revival, told the Houston Chronicle that all four had been wrongly accused.

"We haven't broken any laws, and they know this," said Hayes, who spoke in his church office before an open Bible. "We are strictly a legitimate organization."

Drive-by shooting

It's been a trying week for Hayes, who for 25 years has served the congregation at Gloryland Missionary Baptist, a well-ordered gray church that sits across from a nursing home on a normally quiet side street only a few blocks from the busy Cullen Road Exit of the 610 Loop.

Only two days after Hayes was arrested on a felony charge and released on a $10,000 bond, a drive-by shooting occurred during a funeral service at his church, records show.

The still-unidentified occupants of a gray Buick sedan fired shots as they drove past outside the building, at 4700 Gloryland during a reputed gang leader's Saturday funeral service, prompting panic among members of the deceased's family and hundreds of others in attendance.

An off-duty police officer grabbed his weapon and fired back. No one was injured, but the drive-by shooters remain unidentified.

Hayes said he has no idea whether that shooting was related to his arrest. He referred specific questions about the criminal case to his defense attorney, who did not return a call late Thursday.

The situation is clearly disorienting to Hayes, who has devoted years to helping others accused of crimes.

For four decades, Hayes has served as a volunteer chaplain for Harris County Constable Precinct 7 and Precinct 2.

September court date

Because of his long-term concerns about injustices in the Harris County criminal justice system, Hayes also founded The People's Defense Fund of Houston, a group that raises money for those accused of crimes to help "provide equal access to strong legal defense," according to his online church biography. "Pastor B. Hayes is not only active in his community, but he is active in our everyday lives," the biography says.

Hayes, Dr. Theodore Otey, a board-certified internist, and two clinic workers, Mohammad Sadat and Mirali Sadat, are all scheduled to appear in court in September on felony charges that allege they together unlawfully dispensed controlled prescription drugs through the licensed pain clinic in the 3900 block of Old Spanish Trail in Houston.

In a separate phone interview, Otey also told the Chronicle he is innocent and believes the clinic was "wrongly raided."

"We treat poor people who don't have money for MRIs and other expensive tests, and we have to rely on physical exams," Otey said. "We were wrongly targeted."

Prescriptions issued from January 2012 to the first week of May 2012 included 370,000 tablets of the pain killer hydrocodone and about 270,000 tablets of the muscle relaxant carisoprodol, Kowal said.

Both drugs are commonly prescribed by physicians but also frequently get abused and often have been illicitly dispensed together as ingredients in the so-called Houston Cocktail linked to many prescription drug overdose deaths.

Texas Medical Board records show the clinic has been licensed as a pain management facility since September 2011. Otey, who has been licensed in Texas since 1992, has no disciplinary history with the TMB. He is listed in state documents as the approved clinic owner.

lise.olsen@chron.com