Jabberwocky
Frumious Bandersnatch
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Around dinner time on November 15, 2018, Huntsville police arrived at a quiet cul-de-sac in Hampton Cove to find a 20-year-old woman, scantily clad, who appeared to be hallucinating on a front porch that wasn’t hers. She said people in the house were trying to kill her. Neighbors went over to help and someone dialed 911.
She’d been living with the homeowner, a doctor, and sharing his bedroom, according to court documents filed last week as part of a federal sting. The woman told officers she was on methamphetamine.
She’d been the doctor’s patient since 2015.
That incident was one of at least 35 times Huntsville police were called to the 65-year-old doctor’s home. They searched the house and found two rocks of meth in the master bedroom, Xanax pills in the laundry room and a bag of meth in another bedroom where two other people had been sleeping.
One of the people in the house, a 19-year-old woman, showed officers text messages between her and the doctor. In her phone he was listed as “Marshall” with heart and blushing emojis. In the text messages, she’d asked him for $40 so she and his girlfriend could buy Xanax.
The doctor, a Duke University-educated physician with a busy Southeast Huntsville practice, had texted her back: “Come get it.”
The house where the woman was hallucinating belonged to Dr. Marshall Plotka. It has a view of the pretty lake at the end of the cul-de-sac, tucked toward the back of an affluent subdivision full of quiet streets and lakeside walking trails, a golf course winding throughout.
Last week, Plotka was arrested in what federal prosecutors called the largest prescription opioid prescriber takedown in U.S. history. The sting spanned five states and caught eight Alabamians in its snare.
Plotka’s attorney, Kevin Butler, federal public defender for Alabama’s Northern District, declined to comment on the charges.
While most of those other Alabamians arrested on charges like overprescribing and healthcare fraud, Plotka stood out for the wild details in his case: prostitutes as patients, lines of heroin on his kitchen counter, overdoses and thefts and missing spoons.
The feds charged him with maintaining a drug-involved premises, according to the criminal complaint.
The house
The lawns on Plotka’s street are immaculate, well-groomed, with tasteful landscaping and wide front porches.
The doctor’s home stands apart. Scraggly shrubs don’t hide the weeds in the flower beds. The grass grows longer than in neighboring yards, and the façade needs repairs.
To the neighbors, the house attracted a revolving group of visitors and calls to police at all hours of the night. Neighbors did not answer their doors when AL.com visited to ask for comment, but Huntsville police dispatch notes many calls for police assistance came from neighbors.
To the Hampton Cove Homeowners Association, the house provoked enough violations that prompted a trip to small claims court back in January. In a complaint, the association cited Plotka’s failure to abide by neighborhood covenants by having an unkempt yard and by allowing “persons who do not reside in the Hampton Cove development to cause a nuisance to nearby residents which…have resulted in the police being summoned on multiple occasions.” The owners association declined to comment further.
To federal investigators and local police, the house was a “drug-involved premises.”
But to the homeowner it was, as Plotka described it in a text to his ex-girlfriend, “Dr. Plotka’s Fun House.”
Drug hub
Plotka was one of more than 60 doctors and medical staff caught in last week’s federal sting, the latest chapter in the nation’s war on opioid abuse. He was one of three Huntsville doctors arrested and his story, as laid out in a federal complaint, is noteworthy for its colorful detail.
Federal investigators say Plotka recruited prostitutes and other women to be his patients at Phoenix Emergency Care in Jones Valley, and provided them with opioids. His Hampton Cove home became a hub for drug use, where he let his patients and others abuse a variety of legal and illegal drugs, according to the federal complaint. Police were called to his house often.
“He was definitely one person who needed to be charged,” said Tony McElyea of the Huntsville Police Department. “Doctors should be held to a higher standard, and he was not living to that standard. We wanted this guy for a long time.”
Plotka is currently a federal inmate in the Morgan County Jail.
Long before his arrest, Plotka was well-known to local police. Police dispatch records show concerning behavior at his home, even as he continued to practice medicine.
Drugs and overdoses
Since October 2015, Huntsville police took 35 calls requesting service at Plotka’s house, according to federal court documents.
But HPD dispatch logs show police did additional patrols; police told AL.com they went to Plotka’s house at least 56 times since 2015.
Neighbors and people inside the house called 911 to report a number of possible crimes and emergencies during that time, including theft, harassment, suicide threats, burglary, disturbances, suspected drug deals, prowlers, and the presence of a 17-year-old minor for whom HPD had a pickup order.
In April 2018, police were called to a possible burglary in progress and found two people in a vehicle parked in Plotka’s driveway. The car held crystal meth, heroin, cocaine, alprazolam and a .22 caliber rifle, according to the federal complaint. Plotka had a trespassing warning issued, according to police.
But the most serious 911 calls were for the overdoses.
In February 2018, police found a 30-year-old woman at Plotka’s house who had overdosed on heroin, according to the federal complaint. She’d been spending the night there. Paramedics took her to Huntsville Hospital.
After investigators obtained medical records and text messages, they found she’d been Plotka’s patient since 2013.
Less than two months after that overdose, Plotka texted with the same woman about buying heroin for her, according to the complaint.
A month after that overdose, another 911 call came in. This time it was a 22-year-old man who had overdosed on heroin and methamphetamine. Paramedics arrived to find Plotka administering CPR, according to the police dispatch report. They revived the young man with Narcan and took him to Huntsville Hospital, according to the complaint.
Two witnesses, both former patients of Plotka’s, told federal investigators that Plotka was home at the time and there were multiple lines of heroin that were cut on the kitchen island for the 22-year-old to snort.
Two weeks after that, Plotka’s girlfriend texted him:
“Can u get any Xanax I know u know some1 I can’t get high from anyone’s boy
”(Boy is a slang term for heroin, according to the complaint.)
“What makes you think I know a Xanax source?” he texted back, adding a grinning emoji.
“Ur pad,” she texted.
“You mean, Dr Plotka’s Fun House?” he responded.
Raid and arrest
When FBI agents raided Plotka’s house on March 27, 2019, they say they found drug paraphernalia throughout the house, including needles, a used syringe, a used spoon, a pipe, and baggies with residue of unknown substances.
Agents interviewed two people at the house who said Plotka had given young women money and drugs, and that people regularly used drugs at the house.
Plotka himself was interviewed that day, according to the complaint, and told investigators he knew people used illegal drugs at his house. He said he’d seen syringes at his house.
He said nearly all of his spoons had gone missing.
Jay Town, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, said he had “no comment at this time” on the nature of the relationship between Plotka and the women who were at his house.
But, he said, “It’s fair to say his relationships with these women caused them to become his patients, and recipients of prescription narcotics.”
Longtime Alabama doctor
Plotka has been licensed to practice medicine in Alabama since 1982. He received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine.
He surrendered his Alabama medical license a few weeks ago while under investigation by the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners for multiple violations, including unprofessional conduct, endangering the health of his patients, and excessive prescribing of controlled substances.
“This particular investigation started around February of this year,” said the board’s general counsel, Wilson Hunter. When asked what prompted the investigation, he said it was not the result of a patient complaint, but he declined to elaborate.
Nothing in Plotka’s public medical board file indicates he was investigated by the board after any of the police visits to his house.
Hunter said the medical board is working to build better connections with law enforcement so the board could be notified about situations involving doctors and patients, such as the overdoses reported at Plotka’s home.
Phoenix Emergency Care, where Plotka provided urgent care and pain management services, appears to be closed. Plotka has been listed as the business’ only registered agent since 2002.
Town would not comment on whether any additional charges might be coming.
“If he’s convicted,” said Town, “there are plenty of spoons in whatever federal prison we send him to.”
Source: https://www.al.com/news/2019/04/ala...cruited-prostitutes-as-patients-feds-say.html
