They are required to have had a complete physical exam by their physician every 6 months.

Schultz was intrigued enough to call the company's recruiter, listed on the fax. He was interested, he told the man, but still har- bored doubts about the ethics of the operation. The recruiter quickly dispelled them. Online pharmacies were a booming busi- ness, he said, and a cheaper option for patients than constantly returning to doctors for new prescriptions to treat chronic condi- tions. Alphanet was offering the chance for smaller pharmacies to get a piece of a new market, and help people in the process. The recruiter sent Schultz copies of licenses belonging to the physicians who wrote prescriptions for its network, to prove they were legiti- mate. He also emphasized that Alphanet didn't sell controlled sub- stances, instead specializing in non-controlled painkillers like Ultram, Soma, and Fioricet. "If an online pharmacy is asking you to ship controlled drugs, you better put your fees away for a law- yer," he added, "because what you are doing is illegal." To further put Schultz's mind at ease, Alphanet's representative gave him the number of a former DEA agent in Florida. Schultz called him up, and the man confirmed that Alphanet's business was above the law.

Schultz felt reassured enough to sign up for the network. The computers arrived by FedEx, with instructions on how to set them up. Before long his pharmacists were filling as many online orders as in-person ones. He hired a new full-time pharmacy technician at each location, just to handle them. "I would come in in the morn- ing. There was a program that I would get into that would have the orders," one technician later said. "I would print the order, the purchase invoice, the shipping statement, the FedEx label." She would then hand the labels off to the pharmacist to fill the order and place the bottle in a FedEx envelope.

As the Alphanet representative had guaranteed, each order came with the name of a licensed physician who had written the pre- scription. Schultz's technicians noticed that often the doctors were