Professionals in an Urban Story

 A physician starts writing pain prescriptions for money, mostly narcotics. Thousands upon thousands. So many that when he is arrested the price of the narcotics on the street triples because of the drop in supply.

As he continues to write the scripts, the pharmacists get wary. After a while there isn't a pharmacy in the county--the whole county--who will take the doctor's prescriptions. The market for the prescriptions moves away from town, across county lines to pharmacies further away.

One pharmacy will fill the prescriptions but the pharmacist refuses to take insurance or credit cards. Only cash. He charges 1500 dollars for a script of 100 pills, then writes in the computer he has charged 100 dollars. He is averaging 25,000 dollars a day off the books. He--and his wife and his daughter--are making so much money they have no place to hide it. They own a nursing facility so they start depositing the money in the accounts of demented patients they have there. Since they are responsible for them they have access to their accounts, both in and out. The patients grow rich but don't know it.

Eventually, but surprisingly late, the whole thing dissolves. The physician is looking at 15 years in prison, the pharmacist--and his wife and daughter--slightly less.