LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY - An out-of-state pain clinic owner who told his employees to recruit residents of Kentucky to visit his Pennsylvania and Ohio clinics to unlawfully receive tens of thousands of prescription drugs was sentenced today to 15 years in prison, the U.S. Attorney's Office stated.

Michael Leman, 46, of Louisiana, was ordered to pay $1 million as restitution, federal authorities stated.

"Leman turned his patients into addicts and facilitated others in drug dealing, lining his own pockets with the ill-gotten cash proceeds," Perrye K. Turner, special agent in charge of the FBI in Kentucky stated in a press release.

According to evidence presented at Leman's March trial, Leman conspired from December of 2004 until January of 2008 with two doctors and other clinic officials to distribute oxycodone and methadone to hundreds of Kentucky residents from Pike and Floyd Counties. Court records indicate that approximately 90 percent of the patients who visited Leman's Philadelphia and Cincinnati clinics were from eastern Kentucky, say federal officials.

The clinics took in a combined $1.2 million in cash over a 26-month period.