Copyright held by The John Cooke Fraud Report. Reprint rights are granted with attribution to The John Cooke Fraud Report with a link to this website.
Physicians are frequently placed on a social pedestal by most segments of society. As patients, we are at our most vulnerable when we visit our own doctors, trusting that the doctor will perform competent medical exams and provide proper care and treatment. We also want to believe that when we are referred to a specialist, the specialist maintains the same high level of competence. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
As a Senior Investigator for the Medical Board of California I have arrested physicians for ingesting narcotics, over prescribing medications, engaging in fraudulent medical schemes, committing insurance fraud or homicide and having sex with their patients. Every time I have submitted a criminal case to the local District Attorney’s office, I have run into a barrier of disbelief that a medical doctor would commit the crimes I was seeking charges on. The District Attorney’s office had a difficult time believing a doctor would go to school for eight years, struggle through a residency program and then commit a potentially career ending violation of the law; hence the doctors deserved the benefit of the doubt, no matter what the evidence showed. In every single case I submitted, the physician was given preferential treatment in the amount and severity of the charges filed, in the amount of bail set, and in the severity of penalty assessed. Penalties were usually set through plea bargain agreements since none of the cases ever went to trial.
Case files I have encountered:
A 36 year old surgeon excused himself from the middle of surgery at a prominent Los Angeles hospital only to be tracked down by a scrub nurse. The doctor was found sitting in the changing room, using a syringe to inject Demerol directly into his scrotum to combat withdrawal symptoms from his drug addiction.
Punishment: The doctor was placed on probation for five years and given a mandatory order to participate in the Medical Board’s drug diversion program.
A 74yearold Redlands family practitioner was conducting an initial examination of a 27yearold male Hispanic patient, who presented complaining of a skin rash on his stomach and upper thighs. The doctor conducted a proper examination of the rash and then told the patient, who was lying on the examination table, to remove his underwear. The patient complied and the physician appeared to briefly examine the penis. Then, without warning, he leaned over and performed oral sex on the shocked patient. It was subsequently discovered that the physician had previously been charged with lewd acts, dating back into the early 1960s.
Punishment: The doctor’s medical license was surrendered under a stipulated agreement. No criminal charges were filed.
A physician bottled what was later found on analysis to be swamp water from Japan. He sold liter bottles of the mixture, which contained significant amounts of human feces, to cancer patients for consumption as a cancer cure. Some of the patients died because they opted for this treatment rather than traditional cancer treatments.
Punishment: The doctor was sentenced to four years in state prison. He served a total of four months. His medical license was revoked.
A family doctor in a remote desert community was addicted to methamphetamines, commonly known as “speed”. Our pillar of the community is no ordinary “speed freak”; he was so addicted that he injected the speed with a syringe so that he would get a quicker “high. “He hid the injection sites under his watch band so the marks wouldn’t be visible to his patients.
Punishment: The doctor was ordered into the Medical Board’s drug diversion program and forced to move from the desert community.
A general practitioner in another remote desert community was reported to be falling asleep while examining patients. During a same day interview with the doctor, he fell asleep and slid right out of the chair during his interview with the Medical Board investigator. Upon awakening, he denied being under the influence of any drugs. After he was arrested for being under the influence of narcotics, Vicodin pills were found in his pocket. He later admitted to taking the Vicodin and other depressant medication, all from samples given to him by drug companies earlier that morning.
Punishment: The physician was placed on criminal probation per Penal Code 1000. He will have the charges dismissed after one year and will be placed into the Medical Board’s drug diversion program.
A semi-retired 72 year old psychiatrist in Palm Springs was selling prescription drugs to drug addicts without examinations. During undercover buys from him, one Medical Board investigator said she did not know the name of the drug she wanted, but she knew what it looked like. Of course, the good doctor allowed her to look through the pictures in the PDR and pick out the drug of her choice, a schedule II amphetamine. He was arrested on 19felony drug charges.
Punishment: The doctor received a fine and probation but served no jail time. His house was seized under the federal asset forfeiture laws. His medical license was surrendered under a stipulated agreement.
A prominent 68 year old Riverside family doctor provided thousands of narcotic drugs to a Riverside socialite. The patient became addicted and eventually died from the mixture of drugs taken by prescription. After her death, 216 bottles of various medications were taken from the patient’s home by other family members and used in the criminal and administrative proceedings.
Punishment: The doctor spent one day in jail (booking only) and three years on probation. His medical license was placed on five years’ probation, including a 60day suspension.
An internist with one of the largest HMO’s in California misdiagnosed a patient with severe heart trouble. The patient died a few weeks later and the physician “added” essential notes into the patient’s medical records about discussing the heart condition with the patient. The only problem was that the family had already obtained a copy of the records prior to the additions.
Punishment: The District Attorney refused to file criminal charges. The doctor’s medical license was surrendered in a stipulated agreement.
An internist in Palm Springs traded prescriptions for large amounts of injectable Demerol for car phones. The patient’s wife died from an overdose of Demerol two days after the doctor provided the last prescription. The wife and patient were addicted to Demerol.
Punishment: The internist was placed on three years’ criminal probation, with no jail time. His medical license was placed on probation for five years.
An Internist in Corona provided excessive amounts of Nembutal, a schedule II barbiturate, to a 30yearold woman. The woman died of liver failure after taking 24 of the prescribed pills a day for six weeks.
Punishment: The doctor pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter charges. He was placed on five years’ criminal probation and his medical license was surrendered under a stipulated agreement.
A 62yearold medical doctor/lawyer from Palm Springs was selling a miracle cure to the Palm Springs social elite at a cost of $36,000.00 for a series of 24 injections. This concoction was purported to cure cancer, AIDS, alcoholism and many other afflictions. It was believed to contain a small amount of a cocaine derivative.
Punishment: The doctor made a plea bargain five years of criminal probation, a $20,000.00 fine, voluntary surrender of his license to practice law to the State Bar, and revocation of his medical license.
These cases represent but the tip of a phenomenal iceberg. So many cases of malpractice are hidden by hospital committees and covered up by buddy systems. There are good physicians out there, but each should be judged by his or her own merit rather than by some idealistic social standing.
Dan Goldsmith, president of Goldsmith Investigations in Riverside, CA is a retired medical board investigator. He can be reached at (909) 784-7837.
© Copyright 1997 Alikim Media