A 71-year-old doctor from Shreveport, La., and a small pharmacy in Dubuque, Iowa were part of an illicit Internet prescription-drug ring, the  Des Moines Register reported April 9.

Edward Schwab, a Shreveport osteopath, was one of seven doctors convicted of approving thousands of prescriptions for online drug sales to patients who never saw a doctor in person. Schwab alone approved 19,000 prescriptions; he faces up to 15 years in prison on conspiracy and money-laundering charges.

The drug ring was exposed when federal officials noticed that a small Dubuque pharmacy has started to send large quantities of controlled prescription drugs out to customers nationally; investigators soon learned that the orders were coming from a website called BuyMeds.com. The operators of the site paid doctors to approve prescriptions for customers who filled out electronic questionnaires; Schwab received $8 for every prescription he wrote.

The scheme began to unravel in 2003, when regulators noticed that the Dubuque pharmacy suddenly was mailing out huge quantities of addictive drugs to addresses throughout the country.

This is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, case of this kind that we've seen," said Dale Austin of the Federation of State Medical Boards.

But many other sites still sell prescription drugs, and prosecutors can only hope to shut down all the suppliers; there are far too many buyers to go after.