The rehab scam LOLLL!!! I can think of a few little Guineau F*cks I'd like to lock up as schizophrenic / special needs / pathological liars.. Ok guys enough talk about Joey let's find a new person to talk sh*t about.

Princess, Here is one example, this is shameful.

California rehab clinics bill taxpayers for fake clients, addictions



Jul 29, 2013

Will Evans
Government Oversight Reporter

Christina Jewett
Health and Welfare Reporter


Victoria Byers did not drink alcohol. She did not abuse drugs. But when she was a teenager in foster care, several times a month, she would board a van at her group home and go to rehab.

Byers couldn’t figure out why she had to take drug tests and sit in group therapy sessions on addiction at So Cal Health Services, a clinic tucked in an office park in Riverside, Calif.

“And I told them, you know, ‘Why should I be here? I have no drug issue,’ ” said Byers, now a slow-to-smile 22-year-old.

The director of Byers’ group home confirmed Byers was clean but said she sent all six girls under her care to the clinic because she didn’t have enough staff to separate those with substance abuse problems.

The arrangement was strange. It was also a scam.

So Cal Health Services was ripping off taxpayers, part of a pattern of fraud by rehabilitation clinics that collect government funding to help the poor and addicted, a yearlong investigation by The Center for Investigative Reporting and CNN has found. The investigation, which included undercover surveillance and stakeouts, uncovered a rehab racket that continues to this day.

Thousands of pages of government records and dozens of interviews with counselors, patients and regulators reveal a widespread scheme to bilk the state’s Medicaid system, the nation’s largest. Witnesses to the fraud laid out its inner workings in minute detail, some speaking of it publicly for the first time.

In the underbelly of the Drug Medi-Cal program, clinics pad client rolls by diagnosing people like Byers with addictions they don’t have. They round up mentally ill residents from board-and-care homes to sit in therapy sessions they can’t follow. They lure patients in from the street by handing out cash, cigarettes and snacks. They have patients sign in for days they aren’t there.

One Inglewood clinic fabricated notes and billed for “ghost clients” who never came in. They couldn’t show up, a counselor discovered: Some were behind bars; one was dead.

Even caught red-handed, operators have polished techniques to ward off official scrutiny and keep the money flowing. One Los Angeles County clinic director lodged a complaint against a government auditor, and another called on a local lawmaker for help. In both cases, it worked.

The populous Los Angeles region is one of the nation’s top hot spots for health care fraud, and former state officials agree it is also ground zero for the rehab racket.

Drug Medi-Cal paid out $94 million in the past two fiscal years to 56 clinics in Southern California that have shown signs of deception or questionable billing practices, representing half of all public funding to the program, CIR and CNN found. Over the past six years, more than half a billion dollars have poured into the program statewide.

Following a year of public records requests and questions from CIR and CNN, state regulators announced a crackdown in mid-July. The action came two and a half weeks after reporters submitted a final list of their findings.

The state Department of Health Care Services temporarily suspended 16 clinics suspected of flouting the law and pledged to tighten oversight. Officials would not identify the targeted clinics, saying the information would compromise the investigation.

But veteran operators have become adept at sidestepping trouble.

Among them was Tim Ejindu, who ran the clinic where Byers was sent.

Nearly one-third of the foster children who showed up at Ejindu’s clinics in Riverside and Pomona had no drug or alcohol problem, estimated TaMara Shearer, a former addict who worked as a supervisor.

“Any loopholes, he knows how to find them. I’ve watched him do it,” Shearer said. “He thinks Americans are dumb.”

Under pressure to diagnose teenagers with fake addictions, counselors at the clinics reverted to racial stereotypes, according to Shearer. They labeled white teens as alcohol drinkers and black or Latino teens as marijuana smokers, she said.

Ejindu did not respond to an interview request or a letter outlining allegations against him. When contacted by reporters at his clinic, he declined to answer questions, closing the clinic door and refusing to reopen it.

Joy Jarfors, a manager with the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs until she retired in 2010, said “fraud and abuse (are) rampant” in the system.


Joy Jarfors, a former manager with the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, says “fraud and abuse (are) rampant” in taxpayer-funded drug rehab.

I’m not the employee anymore that has to look at this every day, but I’m a taxpayer that knows that this is going on,” Jarfors said. “It angers me. And there’s story after story after story about Medicaid dollars being cut from people who need the services.”

The cost of failing to treat addicts is high. Drug overdose and excessive alcohol consumption are among the top causes of premature death in Los Angeles County, killing two people nearly every day. Statewide, the Legislative Analyst’s Office has found taxpayers spend more than $1 billion a year on hospital stays related to substance abuse for those on Medi-Cal.

The rehab centers promise a chance to start over in their very names, which include phrases like “new hope,” “new beginning,” “renew” and “U-turn.” But they don’t always deliver.

Vredette Hawkins was one woman who could have used some help. The South Los Angeles mother of four smoked marijuana and was under scrutiny from child welfare officials, she said, after someone accused her of using methamphetamine.

She went to a nearby Drug Medi-Cal clinic a year ago to get counseling for depression. She encountered a chaotic free-for-all, a clinic filled with people who came only because they wanted money.

At Basen Inc., clients received $5 each time they showed up, she said. Hawkins said counselors often abandoned group therapy sessions after 15 minutes, leaving clients to chat about sexual exploits and getting high. Two former Basen employees also told CIR that the clinic paid clients, although one said that the practice stopped amid worries about getting caught.

A county investigation last year found “extremely serious violations,” such as falsified paperwork, but couldn’t substantiate allegations that Basen was paying clients.

“The only one that’s basically benefiting from all this,” Hawkins said, “is … the person that’s running the program.”

Bassey Enun-Abara, the counseling center’s executive director, said he does not pay clients and disputed Hawkins’ description of the clinic. “I can’t believe a client would tell you that,” he said.

As director of the state Department of Health Care Services, Toby Douglas has primary responsibility for Medi-Cal, including the rehab system. Douglas, appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011, declined repeated interview requests.

Douglas’ boss, Secretary Diana Dooley of California’s Health and Human Services Agency, also declined interview requests. Approached by CNN in June outside a public meeting in Sacramento, Dooley headed for a restroom, which was locked.

She then said: “The state of California takes fraud very seriously, and there are many investigations that are underway. The allegations – all allegations are given full and fair consideration.”

Dooley added that her agency’s fraud and investigation unit is “one of the best in the country.” She ended the brief conversation with, “That’s all I have to say.”

Asked again whether Douglas would sit down for an interview, as she stepped into an elevator, Dooley put her hand over CNN’s camera and called for security. Later, her spokesman offered a sit-down interview with Douglas if CNN discarded the footage of Dooley. CNN and CIR would not agree to that condition.

A month later, Douglas announced his crackdown.

The agency’s chief deputy director, Karen Johnson, declined to discuss accusations about specific clinics and acknowledged that the state does not yet “know the expanse of the problem.”

Unreachable clients

Addiction counselor Tamara Askew discovered something wrong soon after she started working at Pride Health Services in Inglewood, southwest of downtown L.A., in 2009.

Addiction counselor Tamara Askew says that when she worked at Pride Health Services, her clients included people in jail and one who was dead.

Askew grabbed a stack of files and began contacting patients to introduce herself. That was harder than she had figured.

Some were in jail, Askew said. Several never showed up. One man she reached out to was dead.

“After that, it was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” Askew said in an interview. “God rest his soul but, I’m like, ‘How are you billing (for him)?’ ”

When it came time to bill Drug Medi-Cal for services rendered, Askew said her boss, Godfrey Nwogene, wanted her to submit paperwork showing that all of those clients, living and dead, had been attending counseling sessions.

The more clients Pride Health Services reported treating, the more money it could charge the government.

“He basically said, ‘How do you think you’re going to get paid?’ ” Askew said.

When Askew would not sign off on billing for clients she hadn’t seen, her boss unplugged her computer, she said, and told her to leave.

Askew sued Pride, claiming she was fired for refusing to falsify records. Pride Health Services contended in court filings that Askew was laid off because there wasn’t enough work. Askew and Pride eventually settled, and a judge ordered the clinic to pay her $15,500.

Pride Health Services Executive Director Godfrey Nwogene, shown in a mug shot from an unrelated arrest in 2003, appealed to a Los Angeles County politician for help after allegations of billing fraud at his rehabilitation clinic. Pride has continued receiving public funds.

The clinic kept reaping more than $800,000 annually in government funding, despite persistent allegations of fraud and serious violations documented by auditors.

This year, a whistle-blower told Los Angeles County officials that Nwogene still was billing for “ghost clients.” When confronted by county regulators, Nwogene and his staff denied wrongdoing.

Without hard evidence, auditors couldn’t substantiate the allegations. They might have had more luck if they had visited Pride on a Wednesday.

Inside Pride’s Inglewood clinic, between a dairy mart and a gas station on busy Crenshaw Boulevard, a small lobby was empty April 3, save for artificial plants and a 1990s-era anti-alcohol poster.

A receptionist told reporters there were no counseling sessions that day.

The office offered no group therapy on Wednesdays, she specified, in an exchange caught on a video camera hidden in a watch.

Yet billing records obtained by CIR and CNN show that Pride Health Services charged taxpayers for counseling 60 people at the clinic that day, at a cost of about $1,600. The clinic was reimbursed for 62 patients the following Wednesday as well.

Nwogene, whose salary has reached as high as $120,000 a year, did not respond to requests for an interview or to a letter seeking responses to specific allegations. When reporters asked for him at Pride’s Inglewood clinic, a staffer denied wrongdoing. Workers then called police and closed the office mid-day.

Fake diagnoses among foster children

In California’s public drug rehab program, clients equal cash. State and federal taxpayer money flows to the local privately run clinics based on the number of people they serve. The counseling is free to those on Medi-Cal.

California spent nearly $186 million on the program in the past two fiscal years, according to figures from the Department of Health Care Services. That doesn’t include methadone clinics for heroin addicts, a separate wing of Drug Medi-Cal.

The state has the nation’s largest population of people who qualify for the benefit, a pool poised to grow sharply under the Affordable Care Act. But recent history suggests that expansion might shovel more funding to clinics that game the system.

A specialty of So Cal Health Services, the Riverside clinic to which Victoria Byers was sent, was diagnosing foster children with fabricated drug and alcohol problems and billing taxpayers for the unneeded services, according to former employees and whistle-blower complaints.

The clinic billed Riverside County between $31 and $75 for each counseling session a child attended, documents show.

“You’d have to make up a summary of them trying this drug and make up scenarios of how they tried it, how they got it,” said Nadine Cornelius, a former counselor. “It was all lies.”

Cornelius tried making her group therapy sessions educational, she said during an interview at a diner near her San Bernardino County home. But eventually, she gave up. Instead, she said she let the teenagers play bingo and watch movies.

An anonymous whistle-blower told county officials that So Cal was paying group homes for “access” to the foster children. Byers’ group home director, Angelina Farmer, told CIR that wasn’t the case.

Riverside County cut So Cal Health Services’ contract in 2010 because so many of its clients had dropped out. That failure was easier to prove than the fake diagnoses of teenagers, according to Karen Kane, the county’s substance abuse program administrator.

Kane said her agency was especially concerned that a false addiction diagnosis could negatively affect the foster children later in life.

“Our goal was to stop them from harming people and get them out of the business – and that’s what we did,” Kane said.

By then, the county already had paid So Cal $1 million, dating back to mid-2007.

Didn't Calabrese, the rat from the Family Secrets trial, finish his parole just last year?.......HEY....MAYBE THEY CAN MEET UP!!!

NNY that was a very interesting article on the rehab clinic. It's crazy how it's killing us tax payers. These people making a killing running them clinics living very comfortable.
I guess you can't knock the hustle. Someone is always up to something.

Philly, as you know Drug Treatment is big business down here in Florida. While there are mostly well run reputable treatment centers down here, the few shady treatment centers are making millions just off the drug testing they provide for the patients. The Florida Governor, Rick Scott, is even trying to get in on the action by forcing all State employees to take drug tests, he says its because its a safety issue but the real reason is he owns a chain of labs that he put in his Wife's name when he became Governor. This piece of work was the President of the Hospital Corporation of America a few years back when they were indicted for a massive Medicare fraud scam. I love this Country but the corruption in our government on every level, Federal, State and Local, is rampant.

Rick Scott and the fraud case of Columbia/HCA

By Aaron Sharockman
Published on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at 11:14 a.m.



Rick Scott’s opponents for governor are telling reporters to essentially brush off a June 2010 poll that shows the former Columbia/HCA hospital CEO beating both Attorney General Bill McCollum in the Republican primary and Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink in a hypothetical November match-up.

Focus on the fraud, they say. The fraud. The fraud.

“Rick Scott has spent $15 million in half as many weeks to fund his public image repair squad’s pricey and misleading paid media campaign,” McCollum spokesman Kristy Campbell said June 10, 2010. “It’s no surprise he has skyrocketed in the polls since Floridians are just beginning to learn about his questionable past. His lead will evaporate when Floridians learn Rick Scott oversaw the most massive Medicare fraud scheme in American history.”

Democrats added their own e-mail titled “Fraud is not a mistake,” and a 2-minute, 40-second web video called “Slick Rick.”

“Rick Scott may think that his millions of dollars will allow him to avoid answering hard questions about his record as CEO of Columbia/HCA ... but with your help we will make sure he is held accountable,” said the Florida Democratic Party’s Eric Jotkoff.

The fraud. The fraud.

PolitiFact Florida had to bite. Here we’ll focus on whether Scott’s old company, Columbia/HCA, committed fraud, and also explain Scott’s role with the company, his part in a federal investigation and the outcomes of the federal probe.

To borrow a line from Scott’s television ads — Let’s get to work.

Columbia/HCA history

Scott started what was first Columbia in the spring of 1987, purchasing two El Paso, Texas, hospitals. He quickly grew the company by purchasing more hospitals. A hospital network created efficiencies. Efficiencies created profits.

In 1994, Scott’s Columbia purchased Tennessee-headquartered HCA and its 100 hospitals, and merged the companies. When Scott resigned as CEO in 1997, Columbia/HCA had grown to more than 340 hospitals, 135 surgery centers and 550 home health locations in 37 states and two foreign countries, Scott’s campaign says. The company employed more than 285,000 people.

Now about Scott’s departure in 1997.

That year, federal agents went public with an investigation into the company, first seizing records from four El Paso-area hospitals and then expanding across the country. In time it became apparent that the investigation focused on whether Columbia/HCA bilked Medicare and Medicaid.

Scott resigned as CEO in July 1997, less than four months after the inquiry became public and before the depth of the investigation became clear. Company executives said had Scott remained CEO, the entire chain could have been in jeopardy.

At issue, Scott says, is that he wanted to fight the federal government accusations. The corporate board of the publicly traded company wanted to settle.

And settle, Columbia/HCA did.

In December 2000, the U.S. Justice Department announced what it called the largest government fraud settlement in U.S. history when Columbia/HCA agreed to pay $840 million in criminal fines and civil damages and penalties.

Among the revelations from the 2000 settlement, which all apply to when Scott was CEO:
Columbia billed Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs for tests that were not necessary or ordered by physicians;
The company attached false diagnosis codes to patient records to increase reimbursement to the hospitals;
The company illegally claimed non-reimbursable marketing and advertising costs as community education;
Columbia billed the government for home health care visits for patients who did not qualify to receive them.

The government settled a second series of similar claims with Columbia/HCA in 2002 for an additional $881 million.

The total fine: $1.7 billion.

Plea deals, fraud

As part of the 2000 settlement, Columbia/HCA agreed to plead guilty to at least 14 corporate felonies. A corporate felony comes with financial penalties but not jail time, since a corporation can’t be sent to prison.

Among the 14 felonies, Columbia/HCA pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Also, four Florida-based Columbia/HCA executives were indicted. Two were convicted of defrauding Medicare in 1999 and were sentenced to prison, only to have those convictions overturned on appeal. A third executive was acquitted and a jury failed to reach a verdict on the fourth.

Was Scott close to going to prison for his part in the case?

It appears not at all.

The former CEO was never indicted and was never questioned in the case, he says. He may have been a target of the investigation — an ABC News report from 1997 says he was — but that never translated into charges.

Sorting it out

Let’s boil this down.

Was Scott running Columbia/HCA when it found itself at the center of a massive federal investigation? Yes.

Did the company pay a record $1.7 billion in government penalties and fines? Yes, Columbia/HCA paid.

And as we checked in this item, did his former company commit fraud? Yes, it pleaded guilty to fraud charges as part of a settlement.

Of course, the million-dollar question is how much of the blame ultimately falls on Scott? And that’s an answer we can’t provide.

Scott was in charge so he bears some responsibility and has said so. But there has yet to come to light any detail of how much he knew, and when he knew it.

Though that won’t keep us from looking.

McCollum's campaign, in a statement, said Rick Scott's former company Columbia/HCA committed fraud. We rate the statement True.

The LCN runs a phone scam and the participants get 5 years in Jail, this piece of work Rick Scott rips off Medicare and is elected Governor. I hear after his second term ends he is going on the lecture circuit to do trainings for wiseguys on how to rip off the government and get rewarded for it.

nice post thanks : )

NNY thank you for that. If your a wealthy man and pay the government or work with them. You can do pretty much anything and get away with it, to a certain degree.

Joey is sexy as they come. It would b wise fir him to stay in Boca tho.