A former Florida sheriff has been charged with racketeering and conspiracy after an investigation into an illegal gambling operation. 

Ex-Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez was arrested Thursday on first-degree felony charges over accusations he pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars and used campaign contributions to keep the alleged gambling operation afloat. 

“As law enforcement, we are held to higher standards of integrity and character than other professions,” Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass said in a statement. “This case revealed that Lopez violated the trust and integrity expected of him as the duly elected sheriff of Osceola County.”

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Fox News Digital has reached out to the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office for comment. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Lopez after his arrest and appointed a Florida Highway Patrol officer, Christopher Blackmon, as interim sheriff. Lopez was elected in November 2020. 

Lopez pleaded not guilty Friday to the charges, and he was given a $1 million bond, according to FOX 35. 

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Marcos Lopez was elected in November 2020.  (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel via AP)

Prosecutors alleged Friday that Lopez took in as much as $700,000 while operating the illegal business, which included slot machines, a lottery and a “gambling house” out of a business called the Fusion Social Club in Kissimmee.

Lopez remained in custody as of Friday afternoon, and he is next expected in court June 30. 

Lopez remained in custody as of Friday afternoon, and he is next expected in court June 30.  (Lake County Jail/FOX 35; Google Maps)

The illegal gambling operation allegedly generated more than $21.6 million over the years. 

In addition to Lopez, four others — Ying Zhang, Sharon Fedrick, Sheldon Wetherholt and Carol Cote — face the same racketeering and conspiracy charges.

 Osceola County is not implicated in the investigation. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A team of researchers believes they may have cracked one of America’s most enduring legends: Where did the settlers of the Roanoke Colony go?

The Roanoke Colony, also known as the Lost Colony, was the first English settlement attempt in the United States. A group of over 100 colonists settled on North Carolina’s Roanoke Island in 1587, led by Sir Walter Raleigh.

John White, the governor of the colony, returned to England for supplies in 1587. When he came back to Roanoke Island in August 1590, he found the settlement mysteriously abandoned – and all the colonists, including his daughter Eleanor Dare and his granddaughter Virginia Dare, gone.

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One of the only clues remaining at the site was the word “CROATOAN” carved into a palisade. It either referred to Croatoan Island, which is now called Hatteras Island, or the Croatoan Indians.

The mystery has haunted Americans and Brits for the past four centuries, with several investigations launched into the matter. Whether the colonists were killed by Native Americans, starved to death or left for greener pastures has eluded historians.

But new research suggests the colonists’ fate may not have been tragic after all. 

Mark Horton, an archaeology professor at Royal Agricultural University in England, spoke with Fox News Digital about his findings.

“This is metal that has to be raised to a relatively high temperature … which, of course, [requires] technology that Native Americans at this period did not have.”

For the past decade, the British researcher has worked with the Croatoan Archaeological Society’s Scott Dawson to uncover the mystery. Horton said they’ve uncovered proof the colonists assimilated into Croatoan society, thanks to a trash heap. (See the video at the top of this article.)

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“We’re looking at the middens — that’s the rubbish heaps — of the Native Americans living on Hatteras Island, because we deduced that they would have very rapidly been assimilated into the Native American population,” Horton said. 

The smoking gun at the site? Hammerscale, which are tiny, flaky bits of iron that come from forging iron. 

Horton said it’s definitive proof of iron-working on Hatteras Island, which could have only been done by English colonists. 

The presence of hammerscale is definitive proof that the colonists moved over to Hatteras Island and lived among the Croatoans, according to archaeologists. (Mark Horton / Croatoan Archaeological Society)

“The key significance of hammerscale … is that it’s evidence of iron-working, of forging, at that moment,” he said.

“Hammerscale is what comes off a blacksmith’s forge.”

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Horton added, “This is metal that has to be raised to a relatively high temperature … which, of course, [requires] technology that Native Americans at this period did not have.”

The excavations took place on North Carolina’s Hatteras Island, which was previously known as Croatoan Island. (Mark Horton / Croatoan Archaeological Society)

Hammerscale shows that the English “must have been working” in this Native American community, according to the expert.

But what if the hammerscale came longer after the Roanoke Colony was abandoned? Horton said that’s unlikely.

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“We found it stratified … underneath layers that we know date to the late 16th or early 17th century,” he said. “So we know that this dates to the period when the lost colonists would have come to Hatteras Island.”

“It’s a combination of both its archaeological position but also the fact that it’s evidence of people actually using an English technology.”

Archaeologists say that the discovery of 16th-century English artifacts on Hatteras Island reveals the Roanoke settlers’ fate. (Mark Horton / Croatoan Archaeological Society)

At the site, archaeologists also found guns, nautical fittings, small cannonballs, an engraved slate and a stylus, in addition to wine glasses and beads – which all paint a vivid picture of life on Hatteras Island in the 17th century.

When asked if the colonists could have been killed in a later war, Horton said they survived among the Croatoans and successfully assimilated.

“We have one little snippet of historical evidence from the 1700s, which describes people with blue or gray eyes who could remember people who used to be able to read from books,” he said. “Also, they said there was this ghost ship that was sent out by a man called Raleigh.”

Horton added, “We think that they assimilated into the Native American community and their descendants, their sons, their granddaughters, their grandsons carried on living on Hatteras Island until the early 18th century.”

When asked if he’s officially solved the mystery, Horton said that though the archaeological evidence is definitive, the legend will probably still endure.

The colonists’ fate may not have been tragic, and they likely assimilated into Native American society based on archaeological excavations, said an expert. (Mark Horton / Croatoan Archaeological Society)

“Have we solved the mystery? Well, you know, it’s pretty good evidence, but there’s always more work to be done,” he said.

Horton added, “And people love mysteries. They hate resolving things one way or the other. So I’m sure that the mystery will continue, you know, whatever the scientific evidence says.”

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Curto contributed to this report.

Two medical professionals argued in a new report that “medical school has gotten too political,” citing “unscientific modes of thinking.”

“Medical students are now immersed in the notion that undertaking political advocacy is as important as learning gross anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology,” the authors wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Sally Satel, a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, and Thomas S. Huddle, a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Heersink School of Medicine, cited several instances of political sentiments affecting the medical school industry. 

They noted that researchers are “promoting unscientific modes of thinking about group-based disparities in health access and status.”

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“The University of Minnesota’s Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity decrees ‘structural racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities,’ despite the fact that this is at best an arguable thesis, not a fact. (The center was shut down last month.) The Kaiser Family Foundation states that health differentials ‘stem from broader social and economic inequities,’” the authors write.

Satel and Huddle pushed further by detailing an incident that occurred at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center. The institution not only called for a ceasefire in the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, the authors wrote that staff chanted “intifada, intifada, long live intifada!” which “echoed into patients’ rooms.”

The New York Times reported last summer that the protesters at the University of California, San Francisco, chanting “intifada” consisted of medical students and doctors.

Such an incident lays out more deeply the consequences of medical schools prioritizing politics over instruction on professional imperatives, according to the authors.

Two medical professionals, Sally Satel and Thomas Huddle, argued that “medical school has gotten too political,” citing “unscientific modes of thinking.” (iStock)

“These doctors were not putting patients first — if anything, they were offending and intimidating patients. They were putting their notion of social justice first,” they wrote.

The two medical professionals cite other instances where medical schools are steeped in politics, such as endorsing “racial reparations” and instituting “antiracism” training in order to qualify for a medical license in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

Satel and Huddle offer medical professionals “guidelines” for how to “responsibly” meet patients’ needs while leveraging their “professional standing to effect change”, including advocating for policies that “directly help patients and are rooted in professional expertise while ensuring that their advocacy does not interfere with their relationships with their colleagues, students, and patients.”

Sally Satel is a practicing psychiatrist and currently gives lectures in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. (Photo by Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)

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Satel, a practicing psychiatrist, told Fox News Digital that she is the medical director of a methadone clinic that represents a clinical setting. In response to Fox News Digital’s request for comment, Huddle said that his “academic career has been as a clinician teaching how to care for patients while caring for them.”