Friday, August 30, 2019
LONDON, KY. – Pete Anthony Tyndale, 47, of Hollywood, Florida, was sentenced to 29 years of imprisonment by United States District Judge Robert E. Wier for conspiring to distribute oxycodone and other drugs, and for money laundering.
Tyndale was the co-owner of the Tennessee Pain Institute (TPI), a pain clinic that operated from 2011 to 2016 near Chattanooga. After a month-long trial earlier this year in federal court, a jury convicted Tyndale, his business partner Anwar Mithavayani, and physician Timothy Gowder, of operating TPI as a pill mill, and for money laundering related to proceeds from TPI. The three men were responsible for the illicit distribution of more than 1.6 million oxycodone 30mg pills, and hundreds of thousands of other narcotic pills and sedative pills, such as Xanax. Approximately half of TPI’s pill customers were traveling from eastern Kentucky.
In earlier proceedings this month, Judge Wier sentenced Gowder to 21 years of imprisonment and Mithavayani to 25 years of imprisonment. A third co-defendant, James Bradley Combs, 41, of Woodbine, Kentucky, received a 151-month sentence. Combs was convicted of possessing with intent to distribute oxycodone, and he was a regular customer at TPI. Another co-defendant, Larry Karr of Keavy, Kentucky, pled guilty to the oxycodone conspiracy charge in May of 2018 and was later sentenced to 108 months in prison.
Under federal law, Tyndale and his co-defendants each must serve 85 percent of their prison sentence. Upon release, they will be under the supervision of the United States Probation Office for three years.
“Today’s sentencing demonstrates our commitment to holding accountable, to the full extent of the law, those who would profit from the illicit distribution of highly addictive drugs like oxycodone,” said United States Attorney Robert M. Duncan, Jr. “Hiding behind the ruse of a ‘medical clinic’ will not protect any drug trafficker from facing the consequences of the substantial harm caused by their actions.”
U.S. Attorney Duncan, Special Agent in Charge D. Christopher Evans of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Louisville Field Division, Special Agent in Charge Matthew Line of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division, Andy Beshear, Kentucky Attorney General, and Richard W. Sanders, Commissioner of Kentucky State Police jointly announced the sentences.
The investigation was conducted by the DEA, the IRS and the Kentucky Attorney’s General Office as part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. The U.S. Attorney’s Office was represented in the case by Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Rosenberg.
