LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) If the clouds above were not enough of an indication, the storm of federal, state and local investigators coming and going made certain Tuesday would not be a good day at Bluegrass Pain Consultants.
At least one of its offices in the Louisville area was closed because of an unspecified investigation.
An FBI spokesperson would not specify what kind of probe had been launched, only indicating it was "conducting activity at multiple locations around Louisville…"
On the door of the Bluegrass Pain office on Dutchman's Parkway, a taped sign on the door told patients to call the office for appointments the next day.
The problem for Dana Friess is she was supposed to leave the state on a trip that following day and needed to clear up a prescription issue on the day of the raid.
She said the scenario added to the ongoing frustration she's experienced with the office.
"I hope they find something wrong to where these people need to be taken out of business," Doug Friess said.
"They take forever to do things, I've had problems with my prescription where they forgot to sign it, they put the wrong year in, they're always messing up on people's prescriptions," Dana Friess added.
A busy signal was heard on calls made to the Bluegrass Pain office and none of the agencies in on the raids would comment publicly on specifics.
Among the agencies involved in the coordinated searches was the Drug Enforcement Administration, Kentucky State Police, Louisville Metro Police, an Office of Inspector General and the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit of the Indiana Attorney General's Office.
Spokespersons for the agencies referred questions to the FBI.
While no charges had been announced at the time of the raids or by the time this story was published, the timing of the searches was significant, considering FBI Director Christopher Wray traveled to Louisville last week to speak, in general, about several topics including the opioid epidemic and prescription drug abuse.
"We have a prescription drug initiative that's focused, very much, on, what we call, the gatekeepers," Wray said, "One of the problems is, it starts with a lot of heavy over prescribing in ways that don't have medical justification."