Wareham dentist Dr. Steven Miller, charged with trading drugs for sexual favors with his patients, was released on $10,000 cash bail after a detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Boston on Wednesday.

Miller pleaded not guilty to the charges. If convicted, he faces up to ten years in prison and a $1 million fine. He voluntarily surrendered his dental license following his arrest on Tuesday, Dec. 14.

Since his arrest, a number of his patients have come forward to speak about his behavior.

“He gave me a ride home but never tried anything" inappropriate, said a former patient of Miller's, who wished to remain anonymous. She was 21-years-old at the time, she said.

"You can’t trust anybody nowadays and it’s sad," the patient said. "Thank God they found out before someone got hurt.”

The patient said that at the time she found nothing odd about her dentist offering her a ride. “I thought he was just being nice.”

Wareham resident Laura Sayward said she had some unusual experiences with Miller.

“He often couldn't remember which procedures he'd already done and which he needed to do…I only needed my wisdom teeth and two other teeth pulled, and he pulled 11 in total, and then put fillings in half of the ones left. The ones with the fillings hurt almost constantly," Sayward said.

Sayward went on to describe his unusual bedside manner. “He repeatedly asked me my age, asked me if I was a dancer, told me I was pretty, etc. I didn’t think much of it at the time because some older guys are like that.”

Mario Savoia, owner of Wareham Barber Shop, said Miller was his dentist for 16 years.

"He always seemed like a fine man," said Savoia.

But about four years ago, Savoia said he started noticing Miller's "bizarre conversations with his staff," adding that he once heard Miller make a comment to a dental hygienist about how he'd hoped she'd "brought [her] boy toy" because she'd be alone in the office that evening.

Savoia said he's also had problems with the dentist's work. He said he'd had a tooth extraction completed by Miller last June, and was asked by an x-ray tech following the surgery if he'd had a post (a metal component used for tooth repair) put in.

"I had a tooth extracted, I didn't have anything put in," Savoia recalled saying. That's when Miller responded: "That's my drill," according to Savoia.

Savoia said the piece of the drill doesn't currently cause him pain, but that he'd planned for Miller to remove it.

Onset resident Christopher Gay said he has a similar tale of woe. His first encounter with Miller was two months ago, and his experience was "a disaster from the get-go."

After visiting Miller's office for treatment of a toothache, Gay said that the dentist left a broken tip of one of his instruments inside of his gum. "He assured me it would never cause a problem, but I insisted he remove it," Gay recounted. The dentist did remove it.

But Gay's experience didn't end there. During a subsequent visit, he pointed out a painful spot in his mouth.

"Miller proceeded to slice off the affected area, but it was a full half-inch away from the actual spot I indicated," Gay said. "It wasn't until I returned home and the Novocaine wore off that I realized his mistake."

The following week, he returned to the dentist with another problem, only to have the dentist treat the wrong area yet again.

"I trusted Miller because he wears a white coat and has DDS attached to his name," said Gay.

Gay paid Miller $1,600 to complete the work. Gay says that Miller was the only dentist in the area that accepted his insurance.

"I diplomatically read him the riot act that Monday morning," Gay said. "The next day, he was in jail."

Stay tuned to WarehamVillageSoup.com. We will update this story as more information becomes available.

Miller was arrested when the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), a division of the U.S. Department of Justice, raided his office Tuesday. In his affidavit, Special Agent Todd Prough states that a cooperating witness told an agent in September that Miller “was prescribing controlled substances without a valid medical purpose, namely in exchange for sexual favors, such as the feeling of breasts or buttocks.” An investigation ensued.

Prough’s statement indicated that a meeting organized by agents between two cooperating witnesses and Miller took place at Borders Bookstore at Wareham Crossing. The affidavit alleges that during the meeting, the cooperating witnesses asked Miller if he could help them get Vicodin. Miller told them that they would first have to register as patients, and said: “I have a very bad reputation at writing drugs. A couple pharmacies won’t even fill my prescriptions.”

This was followed by a meeting at Miller’s office to fill out paperwork, during which he slapped the buttocks of the witness, and asked to see her breasts in exchange for Vicodin, after she had offered to pay him cash, according to the affidavit. He told the witness to return for follow up appointments later that week “so I can justify what I did.”

This was followed by another meeting in December at a Dunkin Donuts, according to the affidavit, with DEA Task Force Officer Paul Callahan posing as one of the cooperating witness’ boyfriend. Callahan asked Miller, “Can you hook me up with a script like her?” Miller indicated that he would simply need to fill out some paper work.

Callahan soon secured a prescription of his own. Miller stated more than once his desire to document everything he did, according to the affidavit.

Out of the 323 people for whom Miller wrote prescriptions, nine were found to be receiving an unusually large amount of Vicodin, Percocet, and Valium in relatively brief periods of time, the affidavit indicates. One patient received eighty 10mg Percocet within a six day period.

Joanne Byron, a friend of Miller’s for twenty years, said that “he’s an upstanding citizen,” noting that he had just recently read at a Reading is Fundamental event at Minot Forest Elementary School. “I’m shocked and disappointed," she said. "I had no clue."

Attempts to reach Miller by phone were met with a message indicating his voicemail box was full.