BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) — Boca Falls homeowner Craig Turturo has been suspended without pay from his job as a Pompano Beach firefighter following his early morning arrest Wednesday on charges related to his co-ownership of alleged “pill mills.”
Pompano Beach Fire Department Spokeswoman Sandra King says Turturo, who spent 11 years on the force with a “spotless” record, is now suspended without pay pending the outcome of the federal charges against him.
Tuturo was apprehended during an early morning SWAT team raid on his Boca Falls home Wednesday. Agents from the DEA, The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, and Florida Department of Law Enforcement shut down the street in his upscale neighborhood as they surrounded his home and took him into custody. Full of parents and kids leaving for work, summer camp, and daycare, some called the scene frightening and “something out of a movie.”
A police helicopter was spotted hovering over the neighborhood in the days before the raid.
County records show that Turturo and his wife Angela paid $745,000 for their Boca Falls home in 2006, one of the top prices paid for property on his street. Pompano Beach firefighters earn between $44,000 and and $62,000 annually.
Turturo's arrest on still unspecified charges comes at the same time as the arrest of another Pompano Firefighter, Lewis Stouffer. Stouffer, the DEA says, was the mastermind behind pain clinics that allegedly dispensed pain pills to patients who did not need them.
Turturo and Stouffer were both arrested in late 2011 by Charlotte County Sheriff's Deputies for posting signs — promoting their pain clinic — in and around Naples.
Wednesday's arrests are part of “Operation Pill Street Blues” which led to the apprehension of 14 doctors, managers and owners of pain clinics statewide.
(Photo: Craig Turturo, Courtesy Pompano Beach Fire Department).
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