A Marietta veterinarian begrudgingly agreed to pay a federal fine of $90,000 last week for not properly recording his clinic's drugs.
Federal authorities allege that Michael Paul Good, owner of Town & Country Veterinary Clinic on Gresham Road, kept shoddy records of the narcotics, took log books home and didn't report a missing bottle of morphine to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
"The owner of Town & Country Veterinary Clinic spun a web of deception when it failed to maintain accurate recordkeeping of its inventory," said Daniel R. Salter, who is in charge of the DEA in Atlanta.
Salter said "such careless behavior" creates the chance for drugs to end up on the black market.
Good thinks the entire ordeal is the work of state agencies and some in the veterinary community trying to defame him.
"Someone had a hair up their butt about me, which started this witch hunt," Good told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday.
Good said that a year and a half ago, about 20 "officers with guns and whole nine yards came parading into my clinic."
A story from Channel 2 Action News at the time confirms that account.
Good said officers had a warrant to audit his drug logs.
"They suspected I was bringing in narcotics from other countries illegally, which just blew me away," he said.
Good said an officer came back about three months later with the discrepancies.
He said some of the errors in his books could have been caused by the office's transition from paper to digital records.
Good has been a veterinarian in Cobb County for 38 years. He runs six practices in Cobb and one in Cherokee County.
He's spent nearly half of his four decades working on rescuing animals. In that time, he started the nonprofit Homeless Pets Foundation.
Good was featured on the "Rachael Ray Show" three weeks ago for saving his 15,000th animal.
He takes animals slated to be euthanized in the South and ships them up north to places like New York or Connecticut.
Between hugging and kissing Ray, he explained that he calls the program "The Underhound Railroad."
He thinks all that good work is part of what prompted the investigation.
"I'm doing so much stuff to help animals because that’s what I love and I think it rubs people the wrong way," he told the AJC. "They don’t like me because I’m successful."
The federal attorney's office for the northern district of Georgia did not respond to questions sent Thursday morning.
When told how much his fine would be, Good said "I told them to shove it up their butt and take it to court."
The maximum possible fine was $160,000.
"This is what the federal government can do to somebody," he said. "I'm not guilty of anything."
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