Physician Kevin Brown Sentenced To 12 1/2 Years. Commentary On Use Of Undercovers In Physicians' Offices & Importance of Chaperones

Photo by: Nick Ut AP

Dr. Kevin Brown, the son of a former Premier of Bermuda, was sentenced to twelve and a half years in state prison for sexually assaulting 9 female patients and was convicted of 23 counts relating thereto. The case was before Judge Pastor in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. 


Dr. Brown was convicted by a jury on August 15, 2011 of committing sex attacks on nine female patients under the guise of breast and pelvic examinations from 2003 to 2008. The majority of the alleged assaults occurred at the Crenshaw Expo Medic Center at 3631 Crenshaw Blvd., Los Angeles where Dr. Brown practiced. 

One of these “female patients” was an undercover LAPD officer who posed as a patient. The undercover female LAPD officer posed as a patient with an ankle injury, and Dr. Brown was found guilty of pulling her top up and exposing her breasts as she was getting ready to leave.

He dismissed the allegations as lies, and his lawyer, Edi Faal, questioned the credibility of the witnesses. However, he was found guilty of 21 counts including sexual battery by fraud, sexual exploitation by a physician, sexual penetration by a foreign object and committing a lewd act. The jury deadlocked on eight felony counts, including rape. Judge Michael Pastor declared a mistrial on those counts.

Although Dr. Brown had been free on $4 million bond while the case and trial were pending, he was taken into custody after the verdict was announced. The 40-year-old doctor faces a maximum term of 16 years and ten months in state prison. According to Deputy District Attorney Ann Marie Wise. Mr. Faal plans to argue once again that the victims were not credible, but did not file his motion in time for it to be heard yesterday. 

Dr. Brown filed an appeal to the Court of Appeal but in April 2013 all of the convictions were upheld except for two which were deemed to have been barred by the statute of limitation since the acts occurred in 2005.

ATTORNEY COMMENTARY: There are two important things to learn from this case regardless of how well or clean you run your practice. 

•  First, the Medical Board is being much more proactive and is using undercover officers in order to obtain recordings and definitive proof in cases. Whether it is a physician or health care provider suspected of prescribing medically unnecessary drugs (especially pain medications or medical marijuana) or one who has boundary issues with patients and makes unwanted physical or sexual advances -- the Board is cooperating with local law enforcement and sending in undercover officers. Assume every patient is wearing an undercover wire and you will save yourself a great deal of expense and trouble and help protect your license.

• Second, I find some physicians reluctant to use chaperones while examining female patients. The added expense of a medical assistant is small compared to the risk to your license and liberty if someone makes a false claim. That chaperone should write their initials in the chart showing their presence. In addition, the chaperone can be used to increase your productivity. For OB-GYNs, plastic surgeons, dermatologists and other practices with a high female patient percentage -- you WILL encounter at least a small percentage of patients with mental health issues. Statistically, it can easily happen that the patient interprets your exam in a way that it was not intended or that typical patient-physician chit chat is interpreted as "flirting," etc.

• Example:  I had one physician client who was double-boarded OB-GYN and Oncologist and was very thorough. One patient complained that there was sexual touching simply because he did the breast exam with her lying on the table and sitting up (apparently no one had ever examined her breasts which were fibrous sitting up) and the other patient had elephantitis of the vagina and he performed a clitoral exam which he fully explained was needed due to high risk of tumors and she complained of a sexual touching. Both complaints were dismissed after an interview but a chaperone who signed the chart would have been important and substantive evidence if the case had gone any further.

Points of today's article: (1) Use chaperones when examing patients of the opposite sex and any patient who shows any signs of mental distress or illness, and 


(2) Assume every patient is undercover and is wearing a wire or video recording device. Do not say or do anything you would not want recorded or videotaped.


Posted by Tracy Green, Esq. Please email Ms. Green at tgreen@greenassoc.com or call her at 213-233-2260 to schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation.  

Any questions or comments  should be directed to Tracy Green, a very experienced California health care attorney, administrative attorney, and California Medical Board attorney.

California Reaches $49.5 Million Settlement With Labcorp (State's 2nd Largest Lab)

California recently announced a $49.5 million settlement with Laboratory Corporation of America, the state's second largest provider of medical laboratory testing, stemming from a qui tam lawsuit alleging illegal overcharges to the state's Medi-Cal program for the poor. In May, Attorney General Harris announced a settlement of $241 million with Quest Diagnostics for the same alleged practice. 


Our firm represented one of the smaller laboratories in this case which also settled for business reasons and, thus, we have followed the settlements in this case closely.  


The settlement with Labcorp is the result of a lawsuit filed under court seal in 2005 by a whistleblower and referred to the Attorney General's office. The lawsuit alleged that Labcorp and other medical laboratories systematically overcharged the state's Medi-Cal program for more than 15 years and gave illegal kickbacks in the form of discounted or free testing to doctors, hospitals and clinics that referred Medi-Cal patients and other business to the labs. 

According to the allegations in the lawsuit, Labcorp charged Medi-Cal over five times as much as it charged some other customers for certain tests. For example, Labcorp was accused of charging Medi-Cal $35.04 to test for total testosterone, while it allegedly charged another customer $7.36 for the same test. What the state did not realize was that in servicing certain low-income community clinics, the labs had to charge a lower price given that the State's reimbursement to the clinic was too low for the clinic to pay the lab the standard rate. 

This case was filed as a qui tam case. Under the state's False Claims Act, any person with previously undisclosed information about a fraud, overcharge, or other false claim can file a sealed lawsuit on behalf of California to recover the losses, and is entitled to a share of the recovery in some cases. Such individuals become plaintiffs and are known as "whistleblowers," "qui tam plaintiffs," or "relators." 


In this case, the whistleblowers were Chris Riedel and his company Hunter Laboratories. Hunter Laboratories allegedly found it could not compete in a significant segment of the marketplace where major medical laboratories such as Labcorp offered doctors, hospitals and clinics far lower rates than they were charging Medi-Cal.


Attorney Commentary: The State is making it more difficult for smaller and medium-sized laboratories to co-exist with large national laboratories. In this case, the State's real targets were the larger laboratories since they could obtain larger monetary settlements from them. Given the state of the economy and the lack of funding for Medi-Cal, we can expect more qui tam cases against larger health care providers.


Posted by Tracy Green, Esq. Please email Ms. Green at tgreen@greenassoc.com or call her at 213-233-2260 to schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation.  

Any questions or comments  should be directed to Tracy Green, a very experienced California health care attorney, administrative attorney, and California Medical Board attorney at tgreen@greenassoc.com.

Medical Board of California Issues Fraud Alert re Imposter Investigator

The Medical Board of California has issued a "Physician Fraud Alert" warning that several physicians in the Los Angeles area have been contacted by a individual impersonating a Board investigator. The individual has been asking for the physicians' social security number and credit card information, and threatens cancellation of the physician's license if the physician does not comply. Unfortunately, the Alert does not provide any further description of this individual.


This individual is not associated with the Board. If a physician is contacted by an individual requesting social security or credit card information, the physician is advised to contact local law enforcement and the Board. Physicians are cautioned to take necessary precautions to protect their personal financial information.

Here is a link to the Alert: http://www.medbd.ca.gov/physicianFraudAlert.html

Vice-President of Tampa Physical Therapy Company Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy To Commit Health Care Fraud

Medicare fraud criminal cases involving physical therapy are not that common but a recent case out of Florida went criminal based on allegations that involved pure fraud in billing for services not provided.  On May 27, 2011, Andres Cespedes, an owner and vice-president of a physical therapy company, Dynamic Therapy Inc.  pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud for his role in a scheme to defraud Medicare before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark A. Pizzo in Tampa, Florida.

According to court documents, Mr. Cespedes was the vice president of Dynamic Therapy Inc. Mr. Cespedes and his co-conspirators purchased Dynamic from its prior owners and transformed it into essentially fraudulent enterprise. Dynamic purported to provide physical therapy services to Medicare beneficiaries, but in reality obtained patient information through kickbacks and bribes and billed Medicare for physical therapy that never occurred.

According to court documents, from fall 2009 to summer 2010, Mr. Cespedes submitted and caused the submission of $757,654 in fraudulent claims to the Medicare program by Dynamic. Mr. Cespedes admitted that he and his co-conspirators paid and caused the payment of kickbacks and bribes to Medicare beneficiaries in order to obtain their Medicare billing information, and used it to submit claims to Medicare for physical therapy services that were never provided. According to court documents, the owners and operators of Dynamic also stole the identities of a physical therapist and Medicare beneficiaries in order to submit additional false claims to Medicare.

Mr. Cespedes admitted that he knew the Medicare beneficiaries, on whose behalf claims were submitted to Medicare by Dynamic, never received the services billed to Medicare. At sentencing, Cespedes faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. A sentencing date has not been set.

Attorney Commentary - Providers: Watch Out For Identity Theft:  For health care providers including physical therapists, the biggest concern raised by this case is how the identity of the physical therapist was stolen. We have seen the identities of physicians and other health care providers stolen before in a very simple manner. Companies or individuals who want to steal identities sometimes place advertisements for jobs in a newspaper or website and then the applicants will send ALL the information attached to their CV including UPIN number, social security number, license number and other identifying information. That information is then submitted on a Medicare or Medicaid application to obtain a provider number for a new location.  Therefore, be careful when applying for jobs and sending your information to blind addresses.

Posted by Tracy Green, Esq. Please email Ms. Green at tgreen@greenassoc.com or call her at 213-233-2260 to schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation.

Any questions or comments  should be directed to Tracy Green, a very experienced California health care attorney who has represented physical therapists and a variety of other health care providers at tgreen@greenassoc.com.

The firm focuses its practice on the representation of licensed professionals, individuals and businesses in civil, business, administrative and criminal proceedings. They have a specialty in representing licensed health care providers in health care legal matters in California and throughout the country. Their website is: http://www.greenassoc.com/

Fired Mayo Radiology Technician With Drug Problem Indicted After He Diverted Drugs And Spread Hepatitis By Injecting Patients With Same Used Syringe He Used On Himself

An unusual health care related criminal case is pending in Jacksonville, Florida. This is not a fraud case but one where patients were allegedly harmed or killed by a hospital employee who was addicted to drugs, diverted drugs meant for patients and when he injected patients with a saline solution -- after having injected himself with the patients' drugs -- he ended up injecting and infecting patients with his own Hepatitis C virus.

On May 24, 2011, the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Florida unsealed an indictment charging a radiology technician Steven Beumel, (48, Orange Park) with five counts of tampering with a consumer product, resulting in death or serious bodily injury, and five counts of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud. If convicted on all counts, Mr. Beumel faces a maximum penalty of life in federal prison.

According to the indictment, Mr. Beumel was a radiology technician at Memorial Hospital from May 1992 through October 2004. Mr. Beumel also worked as a radiology technician at Mayo Clinic from October 2004 through August 2010.

The indictment alleges that Mr. Beumel, before patients’ procedures, diverted syringes of Fentanyl (a synthetic opiad) meant for patients and injected himself with the Fentanyl. Mr. Beumel has allegedly admitted to been addicted to Fentanyl. He then allegedly refilled the empty syringes with saline, but these syringes were now contaminated with his own Hepatitis C Virus. Mr. Beumel has contended that he did not know he had Hepatitis C Virus.

According to the indictment, five different patients contracted Hepatitis C from Mr. Beumel. The indictment alleges that one patient died as a result from Mr. Beumel’s tampering.

An indictment is merely a formal charge that a defendant has committed a violation of the federal criminal laws, and every defendant is presumed innocent unless, and until, proven guilty.

This case was a joint federal and state investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Food and Drug Administration, the Florida Department of Financial Services, and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, Homicide Unit.

In a statement released by Mayo, the hospital said it continues to extend its deepest condolences to family and friends of those killed or injured by the hepatitis C transmission. Mayo has strengthened security changes to control narcotics, and expanded the hospital's drug-screening panel for potential new hires.

Commentary:  This case is a reminder that health care providers need to be careful in screening employees, monitoring employees for signs of drug or alcohol addictions, psychological problems, personality disorders and other issues employees might have that could cause them to act out and hurt other employees or patients (intentionally or inadvertently). The liability that these hospitals could face for the alleged actions of this radiology technician are significant. For smaller providers, a rogue or drug addict employee could cost them their business if there is not sufficient insurance to cover such liabilities. Moreover, an employee with a drug or alcohol problem could pose a danger to patient safety.

Health care providers need to monitor their employees and remember the great responsibility they have for patients' health. Diverting drugs is an all too common problem in hospitals and clinics.

Posted by Tracy Green, Esq. Please email Ms. Green at tgreen@greenassoc.com or call her at 213-233-2260 to schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation.

Any questions or comments  should be directed to Tracy Green, a very experienced California health care fraud attorney  and California Medicare fraud attorney at tgreen@greenassoc.com.

The firm focuses its practice on the representation of licensed professionals, individuals and businesses in civil, business, administrative and criminal proceedings. They have a specialty in representing licensed health care providers and in health care fraud related matters in California and throughout the country. Their website is: http://www.greenassoc.com/

Owners, Managers, Employees & Patient Recruiter of Los Angeles Durable Medical Supply Business Convicted Of Health Care Fraud

One Los Angeles medical supply company that was billing Medicare for power wheelchairs has resulted in six arrests and convictions. Five were convicted by plea agreement and one defendant went to trial and was convicted. Not everyone has been sentenced in this case but even with plea agreements, the sentences so far have been lengthy (30 to 57 months) and show a trend in prosecuting employees who are not owners.

In September 2008 after an investigation by the federal Medicare Fraud Strike Force, the following people associated with Santos Medical Supply in Los Angeles were arrested and have plead guilty:

(1) Marlon Oslvaldo Palma, co-owner of Santos Medical Supply (57 months sentence);

(2) Elsie Edmonds, other co-owner of Santos Medical Supply (57 months sentence);

(3) Heber Josue Gonzalez, 30, manager of Santos Medical Supply (30 months sentence);

(4) Kelechi Ajoku, 29, a registered nurse purportedly in charge of Santos’ facility and its prescription items (sentencing scheduled May 6 by Judge Snyder after a jury convicted him of making false statements in connection with health care matters);

(5) Leslie Duarte, 25, defendant Elsie Edmond’s daughter and a manger at Santos (pleaded guilty to conspiracy and is scheduled to be sentenced); and

(6) Gloria Cristina Hernandez, 62, a patient recruiter (pleaded guilty to conspiracy and is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Snyder on April 27).

According to the government, Santos Medical Supply submitted nearly $3 million worth of fraudulent claims to Medicare for alleged unneeded electric wheelchairs and other DME, which paid out $1,822,016. The $3 million in billing is important since that is used to calculate "intended loss" under federal sentencing laws.

For example, in Mr. Palma's plea agreement, he admitted to submitting claims to Medicare for $5,000 power wheelchairs and other medical equipment that were unnecessary and, in many instances, never provided to patients. Mr. Palma also admitted to having bought Medicare patient information and bogus prescriptions from a medical clinic and patient recruiters and then used that information to bill Medicare. 

As I have written before, the power wheelchair cases are part of a project by the Medicare Fraud Task Bureau.  There are more cases to come in both the state and federal jurisdictions.  If you owned or worked at a DME where power wheelchairs were billed, you should consult counsel to determine if you have any exposure in these investigations. Issues to analyze include: (1) cost of wheelchair and markup to Medicare; (2) delivery records; (3) medical necessity; (4) use of marketers; (5) transportation of patients to referring clinics; (6) cash withdrawals from bank accounts; and (7) numerous other issues that are case dependent.

Further, if you are a physician who wrote prescriptions for power wheelchairs in Los Angeles County or California, you should also consult counsel. Even if physicians are not charged, Medicare and Medi-Cal are aggressive about suspending provider privileges based on suspicion of fraud and abuse and physicians could be witnesses in criminal cases or be subject to complaints to the Medical Board. 

Posted by Tracy Green, Esq. Please email Ms. Green at tgreen@greenassoc.com or call her at 213-233-2260 to schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation.

Any questions or comments  should be directed to Tracy Green, a very experienced California health care fraud, Medi-Cal fraud and Medicare fraud attorney at tgreen@greenassoc.com.

The firm focuses its practice on the representation of licensed professionals, individuals and businesses in civil, business, administrative and criminal proceedings. They have a specialty in representing licensed health care providers and in health care fraud related matters in California and throughout the country. Their website is: http://www.greenassoc.com/