Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Fake Doctors Who Gave Everyone Alzheimer's

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Robert sits down with Dr. Kaveh Hoda to tell several hilarious fake doctor stories that wind up exposing the dark heart of the health insurance industry. (2 Part Series)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi friends, I'm Danielle Robay. And I'm Simone Voice. And we're here to introduce you to The Bright Side, a new kind of daily podcast that's guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we're bringing you conversations about culture, the latest trends, inspiration, and so much more. We'll hear from celebrities, authors, experts, and listeners like you. Whether it's relationships, friend advice, or figuring out how to navigate life's transitions,

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Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Call zone media. Oh boy, Howdy. Call Zone Media. Oh, boy howdy. What's killing my patience? This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast that just, I would say, heroically, allowed Dr. Cavejota, our guest for today, to save a life before coming here. We didn't demand that a man die

for the sake of meeting our podcast schedule. And I think we deserve an award for that. I don't know what kind of award. You were very gracious. You were very gracious about that. He thanks you, I thank you, we all thank you for that. And I did have to run it by you beforehand, that is correct.

Yeah, yeah. That's, you know, if you have a, if you know anyone on the Nobel committee, hit them up, you know, we'll take a Webby Presidential Award of Freedom, any of them, any of them, you know, I'm good with whatever, and the EGOT, all of the EGOT awards we take. You'll take a Webby Award for Freedom,

that's how I know I'm the only person on this call that has a Webby. So if you're the only person on this call that has a wedding. Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, And I'm hopeful that you know one of these days will figure out how to make TV shows and stuff off of some of the stuff We're doing but in all of these pitch decks people keep describing me as an award-winning journalist and folks It's really fun to correct them. I have never received an award for anything Nor do I expect to. Hey, you win the award of being the best business partner ever from me.

I got the only award that really matters to me, which wow, Sophie's turned on a Zoom walk in. So when she says certain things, fireworks go off behind her. It's really fun, but I don't know what's going on. So it just keeps happening and it's really fun, but I don't know what's going on, and so it just keeps happening, and it's really just, just makes me seem so much cooler than I am.

I was leaving a nightclub in Los Angeles, this was seven or eight years ago, and I had had far too much to drink, and outside the nightclub was like the best dressed man I've ever seen in my life. He had a waistcoat on, everything like shone, but not too much, incredible, like custom leather boots. And I vomited into a trash can in front of him.

And he said, good work, buddy. And that's the only award I ever need, you know? I don't know anything about that guy, but he was cool and he saw that I made it all into the trash can and he was like, this man's a fellow soul, a traveler on the road. Anyway, this is a podcast about bad people.

And some bad people are doctors. Oh, that's right. And some of them are, what's that show, The Good Doctors? And then it's just you. It's just you If you look at Hollywood it's always like every show about doctors and or movie about doctors is basically Everyone in the medical system is terrible except for this one guy who's willing to buck the system He's gonna patch some Adams or whatever happens in the patch Adams movie Yeah

No You know we we've built, I would say probably about like 15 to 20% of this show's like legacy and audience has been built off the back of like quack doctors. Most of whom were not real doctors. You know, we've definitely covered some actual doctors who were monsters.

A lot of them came from the era back when anybody could be a doctor if you just said you were. We always have fun with these. And so I'm always on the lookout for like a good fake doctor story, right? Yeah. And periodically, especially I think over the last year or two, I keep coming across stories of like,

well, this is really interesting. This is like a fake doctor or whatever that has like an, it's an interesting story. I want to tell it to people, but there's not that much here. I get maybe two pages of script out of this, right? And so my plan was, I'm just gonna collect three or four of these, put them together and we'll probably get a good episode,

maybe a one-parter or something out of it. And then as I was putting together a couple of these little shorter fake doctor bastards, I kind of uncovered, I mean, I uncovered other people's reporting that uncovered like a massive sweeping nationwide healthcare scam by the insurance industry that is destroying public health

and the lives of countless Americans. So that's kind of what the story's gonna be about, but we've got some good medical bastards here too. Fantastic. Let's fucking burn my career to the ground. Forget it. Let's do it. Let's burn bridges today. I love it.

Well, the first guy we're gonna talk about, you're not gonna have to build any bridges for, because this man is a, and I promise this, this ties into our classic deep sinister over theme here, but it's gonna seem just kind of like a one-off at first. And the guy we're gonna talk about is Malachi Love Robinson. That's a real name.

It sure is. As far as I can tell, this is his actual name. It's Love-Robinson. You got a name like that, you are destined for greatness or for jail. One of the two. Yeah, it's prison or you solve a plague. One of those two things.

It's grift or great. None of the other. Yeah, grift or great. Yeah, there's no Malachi Love. None of the other. Yeah, grift or great. Yeah, there's no Malachi love Robinson, just like mowing his lawn, working a nine to five as an accountant. No, you go big. You go big or you wind up dying in a cell.

So back in the winter of 2014 to 2015, a young doctor started doing rounds at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. I'm sure you can correct me if I get something wrong, but my understanding is that large hospitals and like often have groups of young doctors rotating through them as they finish residency requirements. Right, this is part of how you become

whatever doctor stereotype reference the Zoomers will recognize right now. I don't know what doctors show us on TV. They probably haven't seen House. It's still fucking Grey's Anatomy. Grey's Anatomy. Is it still Grey's Anat know what doctors show us on TV. They probably haven't seen House. It's still fucking Grey's Anatomy. Grey's Anatomy. Is it still Grey's Anatomy? They are still on TV. It's incredible. No.

I could do a whole show on Grey's Anatomy. See, and this is why the Zoomers are not popping enough pills. They didn't have Hugh Laurie making it look good for us. God damn it. That's tragic. So for about a month, this new doctor, Malachi Love Robinson, was a regular presence at these clinical rotations. He'd walk around with a lab coat that read anesthesiology. He would tell people he was a doctor.

At one point, an OB-GYN at the hospital received a letter from Malachi asking, "'Hey, can I shadow you?' And I think he found this a little odd. It's not totally weird, you know, but he was like, okay, this is not the way people usually ask for this sort of thing. And hospitals are busy places.

So whatever kind of odd impression Malachi occasionally gave off usually sort of gave way to the fact that everybody's got shit to do, right? There's like, there's people bleeding to death and stuff. You know, it's been too much time worrying about the weird looking kid, right? Yeah, okay, yeah, whatever. Yeah, come on, come on.

Clearly you're supposed to be here, right? You have a coat, you look okay, yeah, whatever, yeah, come on, come on. Clearly you're supposed to be here, right? You have a coat, you look like a doctor, yeah, yeah, come on. There wouldn't just be a random boy in the hospital, right? But that's exactly what happened. And I'm going to read a quote from an article in the Sun Sentinel. Staff at the medical center's OBGYN office was alerted by a patient that a young male

who quote, appeared to be a child, was dressed as a doctor and was inside an exam room. Another security guard told police she had seen the boy gain access to secured areas of the hospital in the past week. Security footage showed the boy entering the lobby from the parking lot. Officers saw the car parked outside and could see a white lab coat on a hanger in the back seat. When interviewed by police, the teen told them that he has been a doctor for years and that his family could vouch for him. Oh no.

Oh, I'm just realizing that he specifically went for OB-GYN. Yeah. Oh, what a fucking turd. If he was just some sort of like precocious youth who was like, I want to learn medicine and be Doogie Howser, I'd be like, I would have a little like love for that. A little part of me would appreciate that that but now I see what he's doing He's just like a young kid who wants to see boobs and stuff. That's that's probably it right? He never will admit that but that is my guess as to why he's kind of like specifically trying to do

OBGYN stuff and like it is it's It makes sense that it's a patient who first makes the report because they're kind of they're just stuck in a bed and they see This kid they're like there's no way that's a doctor who first makes the report because they're kind of, they're just stuck in a bed and they see this kid and they're like, there's no way that's a doctor. This is clearly a child. Why is a child in this room with a lab coat on? Oh my God, when did this happen? This happens like 2014, 2015.

Not all that long ago, right? Like, yeah. So eventually, and again, this only takes a couple of months, which is longer than you'd expect, but he's not, it doesn't go on for that long. And the police get called, right? So there's some news reports that a child was, and none of these reports, by the way, name Malachi,

because you don't, in journalism, you don't name children who commit crimes, right? It's a pretty hard and a fast rule, because they're children, like this is bad, but he is still a child. We know his name because of crimes he continues to commit as an adult. As a spoiler for where this is going.

So the police, you know, take him into custody. There's news reports at the time note that his mother, like said, he was ill. He was refusing to take medicine, but he was under the care of a doctor. She was kind of insinuating maybe he was pretending to be a doctor because of that. I don't actually know if any of that's true

or if his mom was just lying. It was all really suspicious and weird, but again, Malachi is a minor. So he gets some minor punishment and the case sort of drifts away without much comment because there's not really much else to do when a kid commits a crime like this. It's certainly a bad thing to do,

but there's no victim, right? He didn't hurt anybody in a way that we can, you know, define yet. Right, I mean, I'm really fascinated to know what they let him do. Cause like when I take medical students or residents, like around for like rounds and I'm like teaching them, I will, you know, with the patient's consent always is like,

hey, can he listen to your heart? Can he do this abdominal exam? I'm really wondering if he was just walking around watching them or if he was like trying to get handsy with these things. The hospitals are cagey about it. My guess is that just because he was kind of nervous, he didn't push to do it in the way like a real resident

who's actually trying to get some hands-on experience might. But it probably wasn't nothing too, like the hospital kinda wants you to think it's nothing, but like, I don't know guys, he was there a while. What I'm fascinated to know is usually people are walking around with notepads writing down stuff. I'm wondering if he had a notepad and if anyone looked at it, it was just like drawings.

It's just boobs. Like doodling boobs and stuff. It's a little creep. Perhaps. A little creep. Not impossible. So, you know, this is the kind, there's a number of reasons a kid might do this.

He might just legitimately wanna be a doctor and also be a child and thus bad at knowing what's appropriate. This could also be someone who's mentally ill. There are certain mental illnesses, people often get weirdly obsessed with doctors and medicine. That's not what's going on with Malachi. He is a con artist and we're gonna learn this later

because about a year after this happens, when Malachi is now an adult, Floridians wake up to the opening of a new medical clinic in their area, New Birth New Life Medical Center and Urgent Care, LLC. On the website is a stock image of a racially diverse group of awkwardly smiling actors pretending to be doctors.

And below that is this text. New Birth New Life Medical Center and Urgent Care's mission is to provide personalized, high quality, holistic, and alternative medical care on an as needed or preventative basis. The only staff member listed is Dr. Malachi Love Robinson. And despite having just been arrested for looking like a child dressed as a doctor, he could not help but pick a photo and bio for himself that screamed child pretending to be a doctor.

Have you ever seen a child, a more obvious child pretending to be a doctor than that? This is so, Robert has the photo on the screen now we're watching, looking at this. And it does, I do remember seeing this now that you put this up. Yeah. And oh my goodness, it looks like a child,

like a sweet, sweet boy. You want to pinch his cheeks. Yeah, yeah. But knowing what I do now, I want to pinch them really hard. Yeah, yeah. Like really hard, like painful. It looks like, you know, when I was in high school, my high school offered like a pre pre-med program

where you could actually do some very limited like clinical rotations. And I think you'd be kind of certified as an EMT, sort of by the time you graduated high school. It was like for kids who wanted to be doctors and stuff. It looks like the photos they would take. Like you're clearly a child, but like you've gotten access to a lab coat.

No one in medicine has that much enthusiasm in their smile anymore. No, no. Even the young ones, they don't have that. Not by the time they've got their PhD. Wait, hold on a second. He had a PhD? I missed that. No, he's claiming to.

He's listed himself as Love Robinson, PhD, HHPC, AMPC. I don't know what those other two are. Whoa, I don't either. I think they have to do with, cause he's not just pretending to be a real doctor, he's pretending to be a real doctor who's also like a naturopath. He can do food and herb therapy, psychotherapy,

electrophoretic therapy, physiotherapy, and mechanics. And also by the way- People think he learned this when he was like four? He's so young, how would he have learned all this stuff? If somebody is saying that they are both a regular doctor and can do psychotherapy on you and electrotherapy on you and herb therapy on you, they're probably not able to do any of those things.

I just want to point out that I went to go look up what HHP-C meant and the first thing that comes up is the Reddit thread about this guy. The second thing that comes up is Teen Charge will be pretending to be a doctor. So I don't know if HHP-C is a thing. It may not mean anything. And if it is, let us know. That's just like doctors would love to put like these titles after their name like MD,

PhD, PIMP, G M.D., P.H.D., P.I.M.P., G.O.D. We just love it. Can't get enough of that. My brother's job title is like three sentences. Jesus. Yeah. You know what?

See, this is why real jobs like podcast, or you could just say in a single word. Exactly. My real work, when I'm really giving back to humanity. My calling. My calling. Yeah, I've been covered in blood because of my job too, Kava. I wasn't saving a life, but there was a lot of blood.

So about a month after this website goes up, an 80 something year old West Palm resident named Anita Morrison starts experiencing stomach pain. Like most people do in this situation, I think she Googles like urgent care or something. She's looking for like clinics near me, right? And you know, our lives are governed by algorithms from various search engines and apps.

And one of them decided the closest clinic to her was New Birth New Life Medical Center. I do think Malachi, part of why there's so many different terms for all sorts of different treatments in there is so that it'll get pulled by an algorithm, right? He's clearly had some understanding of like, if I phrase this in a certain way online, my business will be suggested to people who are nearby

who need medical help, right? NBC News describes what happened next. She called the office located in her hometown of West Palm Beach and spoke with a man named Dr. Malachi Love Robinson, who offered to pay her an in-home visit. Wearing a white lab coat and stethoscope slung around his neck, Love Robinson examined Morrison,

focusing on her legs, heart and lungs, she said. He told her she had arthritis, then he sold her natural vitamins to dole the discomfort. She said she allowed the baby-faced physician to return four more times, although by early January she realized something wasn't right inside her home. Personal checks went missing." So he's just sort of robbing this old lady. Wow.

Using being a doctor to get into her house and then taking stuff from her. The Washington, yeah, it's gross, right? It makes me so mad. It makes me so mad. Yeah. Like, it's just like the, I mean, you know, as doctors, I'll be the first to say we're not perfect and call us out for our many, many faults, but.

Of course not, I've even heard of a podcaster or two who's done bad things. Oh, I have not, never, never, but- Of course not. I've even heard of a podcaster or two who's done bad things. Oh, I have not, never, never. But definitely it's happened and it's like, we try our best to create a sense of trust with our patients and to do a house visit is a pretty uncommon thing. And it's such a rare thing that when I hear of it happening still, and it still does happen rarely, there's a part of me that loves it just because it is the most old-fashioned the heart of medicine going to where the patient's at, both literally and also in some senses

figuratively, meeting them where they're at. And in this case, he's taken that trust, and he is using it to his own nefarious gains. And it really pisses me off. Because I at least when a doctor, I mean, I don't know if it's better when a doctor does it a bad thing or not. But you know, the fact that someone is muscling in and trying to use our title in that way, like we don't have enough problems. It makes me so angry. It makes me so angry. I hope something bad happens to this kid. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't go, like, yes, as a spoiler,

it does. So the Washington Post reports that the final straw for Anita, the woman that he is stealing from, comes when she calls him over, because she's, again, she keeps experiencing pain, probably because he's not treating whatever her underlying thing is. He's not doing shit for her. And he tells her that she needs to go to the hospital.

And his plan was to rob her home after she was taken away and blame anything missing on the fact that, well, you're old, you just forgot. But Anita hands him her purse as she's being taken away by the EMTs to put back in her house. And he takes her checkbook and he starts cashing fraudulent checks all around town. So that makes it pretty easy for her to call the authorities

and they set up a sting, bada bing, bada boom, he gets arrested, right? This is the point at which the news starts covering the story. Malachi was 18 now, which meant they could publish his name. And he had now robbed an old lady if it turned out to be like $34,000. So at this point, we're like,

he does not deserve the benefit of, maybe he could get better here. Let's put him on blast effectively, right? This is not like him being like, he's a sick kid who needs help. I mean, this is really thought out. Yeah. It's not a bad strategy, to be honest with you.

No, no, no. When someone's going to the hospital, there's so much chaos around that and they're so sick and they have so many other things to worry about. You would think that it's the last thing on their mind to think about where their checkbook is. Of course. So it's really well thought out and it's so despicable.

Oh yeah, no, it is. It shows he's obviously smart enough. He understands how to manipulate the internet and these algorithms in order to put himself in a position. He's got some degree of social manipulating ability, but he also doesn't seem to have the self-control. I think a more skilled con man would have been like, okay, I've gotten five, 10 grand out of this old lady.

Time to move on. Like eventually she'll notice and that'll get me in trouble. So I'm gonna mosey on down the street. I'm not trying to give people advice. I'm just analyzing this guy. One of the things that's interesting when you read articles about him,

some of them like the Washington Post piece have these details about his family and every single fact you learn about this guy sounds like another scam that we just haven't uncovered yet. It's amazing. Quote, love Robinson's grandfather, William Robinson, said this is all a misunderstanding. He told the Sun Sentinel that the teen

never claimed to be a medical doctor, just a holistic doctor, and that he held certificates to practice from online schools. He was pursuing things, but I don't really know what it came to, Robinson said. He was pursuing the field that he wanted to get into. A local station, WPBF, realized this kid was willing to talk and smelled like this.

They're like, okay, there's content here. So they reach out to this kid and they're like, hey, is there any chance you were the little boy who pretended to be a doctor at that hospital last year? And Malachi's answer was, I requested to shadow physicians. Next thing I know, cops are there. That's all I know. I have no idea.

NBC does more digging because by now, reporters are calling Malachi Dr. Love and I think they're doing that I think whoever did that was like there's a pretty good chance this gets turned into a Netflix series and I wanted to be based off Of my article. So let's try to find a title here Yeah And they find out that he does have one seemingly legitimate qualification, which is a certification from the American Association of Drugless Practitioners You heard of these guys Kaveh? I have not but I don't love the sound of it. No, no which is a certification from the American Association of Drugless Practitioners. You heard of these guys, Kaveh?

I have not, but I don't love the sound of it. No, no, that's because they're bullshit. They are like a real thing. They're just a real thing for conmen, right? Yeah. Ah, conmen's not the right term. They're a real thing for kooks, for cranks, you know? Mm-hmm. Not saying that like, you always need to use drugs to treat problems. There's a number of problems that have treatments that aren't based in drug giving

Yeah, but all of my problems require drugs Sophie Like like my problem of being sober, which is why I need to drink this kratom lemonade You know, I will say this while he drinks his kratom lemonade, which he just took a huge swig of. Oh, yeah, baby You know, I'm not gonna sit here and say that Western medicine has the complete knowledge of everything that happens with the patient Yeah, I mean there's lots of we can learn from other places and and I'm open-minded to things but you know We look for proof we look for evidence and when there's not there's this big we look for evidence, and when there's not, there's this big vacuum, and in that vacuum gets, all that space gets filled with grifters.

Almost all of it. Yeah, it's one thing to be like, you know, I have had, you know, I had a lower back problem, right, that I dealt with through like a physical therapy regimen. I didn't use drugs for it. Sometimes that works, but to say that I'm just a drugless medical practitioner, well no, sometimes,

how are you going to druglessly treat the flu? Like, how are you going to deal with cancer without any drugs? You know, like medication exists for a reason. Right, yeah. Look to your beautiful four-parter on Steve Jobs for that. Yeah, yeah, exactly, look at what happened with Steve when he tried to cure his cancer with apples.

Right. So the American Association of Drugless Practitioners are based out of Galveston, which is the first black mark against them. Nothing good comes out of Galveston, nor will it ever. More to the point, anyone can join their organization. Not any doctor, anybody, right? So you can be a drugless practitioner, which like,

I don't know, if you're just like Ted, who works as an accountant or whatever, like what are you a drugless practitioner of accounting? Yeah, you don't have to be any kind of medical professional, right? Essentially the number of people who could join this association, like encompasses everyone on earth.

If you ever treated a cold by just waiting until it got better, congratulations, you qualify. Yeah. So the AADP is primarily a way for holistic practitioners without real qualifications to say, number one, this is a thing that I can put in a frame. I can have it up in my office or whatever, and it looks like a certification

to somebody who doesn't know anything. And it's also kind of a way to say, I don't prescribe medication, so you can't get angry at me for saying I'm a doctor and giving someone wild honey for their lymphatic cancer or whatever, because that's just not the kind of doctor that I am. NBC reached out to the group's director and were like, hey, this absolute con man who robbed a lady said that he was certified by your organization.

And the guy who runs the AATP was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Our credentials don't confer the ability to diagnose or treat patients, right? That's not what this is about. So like, what the fuck is it about? It's just there so quack doctors can stick a thing on their wall, right? I recognize also that I might sound a bit hypocritical here when I say this, but because I'm a member

of the Universal Life Church and I'm a reverend because of it. Oh boy, oh, cave, cave. That's the next paragraph, bro. Oh, God damn it. So this guy, the head of the AADP says that like, because Malachi lied about being a doctor, we've kicked him out of the AADP.

We police our own, right? And I'm gonna continue from NBC here. This is where we bring in the Universal Life Church. In addition, Love Robinson's doctorate was from the online Universal Life Church Seminary, according to documents released by the Florida Department of Health. The degree in divinity can be bought from the site

for 29.95. You will be legally entitled to use the title doctor in front of your name, indeedee after your name, the website says. Now look, Kaveh, I also have used the Universal Life Church to allow me to do things to people, like marry them. That was a creepy way to phrase that. Wow, I did not enjoy that sentence.

You did things to people for sure. Some people might say that's invasive. Look, the Universal Life Church has meant a lot of fun for all of us, but there's no reason to include the line, you will be legally entitled to use the title doctor, unless you're selling this for scammers who are gonna run cons.

Like we can all agree that, right? There's no other reason to say that. I have to say yes, I do agree and that bothers me. To be honest with you, so I did it also so I could marry some of my friends. I didn't marry them myself, I married two other people. We know about your swinging and hipster life. Yeah.

So, you know, I thought the term that you could use was healer. I didn't realize you could use the word doctor. I feel like that is a big difference. Well, cause it's the doctrine of divinity. Yeah, you didn't have to worry about that. You already have that title. Yeah, I guess it's true.

Yeah, I guess maybe I wasn't paying attention. I'll have to look back at that. Speaking of the universal life church, you know who else has the right to marry anyone they want? I'm gonna guess blue apron can marry people at will. Even if you don't wanna get married, they can force you to get married. They can and they often do.

Look, if you see anyone with the blue apron armband, run. Run for your life. They, your freedom means nothing to them. Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to NPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration

of the hosts in journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories, Black Truths on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. When you find that bright spot

to help you get through your day, it's powerful. That's where the bright side comes in, a new daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that's bringing you a daily dose of joy. I'm Danielle Robay. And I'm Simone Boyce. Listen, both Danielle and I are reporters. We've covered the news and we know the world can feel heavy. But The Bright Side podcast is a space to have a little fun, to learn something new,

and get into some friendly debates. That's right. Join us five days a week to see how life can look from the Brightside. We'll hear from celebrities, authors, experts, and listeners like you. Whether it's relationships, friend advice, or figuring out how to navigate life's transitions, we'll talk through it all together. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine every weekday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, New York City needed a tough cop like Detective Louis Scarcella. Putting bad guys away. There's no feeling like it in the world.

He was the guy who made sure the worst killers were brought to justice. That's one version. This guy is a piece of shit. Derek Hamilton was put away from murder by Detective Scarcella. In prison, Derek turned himself into the best jailhouse lawyer of his generation. And the law was my girlfriend.

This is my only way to freedom. Derrick and other convicted murderers started a law firm behind bars. We never knew we had the same cop in the case. Scarcella. We got to show that he's a corrupt cop. They can go f*** themselves. I'm C. Fishman. And I'm Dax Devlin Ross.

And this is The Burden. Listen to new episodes of The Burden on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive bonus content, subscribe to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts. Ah, we're back. Back holed up in three separate undisclosed locations, hiding from Blue Aprons shock troops

as they comb the West Coast looking for us. Just what we need, another blue apron conspiracy that our listeners are gonna take to be truthful. Yeah, yeah, you know, Sophie, I thought I was gonna be better about this sort of thing, but it's like we always say on the show, power corrupts and it's also really fun to be corrupt. So I'm just gonna keep going.

You are such a healer, Dr. Evans, please. Thank you, Reverend Dr. Evans. That's a real one though, that comes from the state of New Jersey, and that's an actual state, allegedly. Nothing good comes from the state of New Jersey. Wow. They have trees, they have nice trees in New Jersey.

They got nice trees, my old boss Dan O'Brien. The Sopranos, the Sopranos, they take it back. The Sopranos? That's three good things, that's more than you get from a global. Lower your taxes. Great. So the state of Florida play against type

stopped allowing naturopaths to examine patients in 1957. I was actually shocked when I heard this. I'm shocked as well. That is better than I thought Florida would be doing on that. Given what their Surgeon General is doing currently, that is amazing. That must've been done well before he was there.

Yeah, I mean, this is 57, right? Now, and it's also not as good as it sounds because while they're not allowed to examine patients, they are allowed to consult on patients. And this is kind of the gray area that Dr. Love was hoping to sail through once he got caught, right? That like, I'm not treating patients, I'm consulting,

I have the right, but like, he also stole a bunch of people, right? That like, I'm not treating patients, I'm consulting, I have the right, but like, he also stole a bunch of people, right, money from people. And in addition to stealing money from people, the way that he was able to like, cause he was like billing Medicare too, for the treatments that he was doing, cause he's working at these old ladies.

And you know, as you, I'm sure you know, Kava, in order to bill Medicare, you have to have what's called an NPI, or national provider number. This is the number that Medicare and also health insurance companies use it to bill Medicare, you have to have what's called an NPI, or National Provider Number. This is the number that Medicare and also health insurance companies use it to identify physicians for the purpose of approving billing, right?

It's a number that says- And I'm never gonna give you mine, Robert, so stop asking. That's, yeah, yeah, well, all I need is your signature for my purposes right now. You can Google it. Right. When I first started looking into Malachi's case, it was not clear to me how he faked his NPI.

And the articles I read seemed to be kind of like confused on the matter, right? I think there were a couple of different theories posited. But when I looked into it, this is what's getting into the actual like over-conspiracy of the episode. It's like anyone can fake an NPI. It's the easiest thing in the world to do.

There is absolutely no protections stopping people from faking this. And why that is the case and how health insurance companies play into it is kind of gonna be the big overarching theme of the episode. But what matters for the moment is that once he's in the system and he's got his NPI,

he found it easy to get his information added to various online databases of medical practitioners, which helped him fill out his faux resume. Right after he got caught and loudly proclaimed that the newsman covering his case would all see, it was just a misunderstanding, he disconnected his phone and put up a Facebook page claiming he had stage two kidney cancer.

Then he took down his Facebook entirely. At 20? Yeah, at like 18, something like that. Yeah, I don't think so, bro. Malachi was sentenced to 28 months in jail. And in the interim period where his case went forward, he left the state of Florida illegally and tried to buy a $35,000 Jaguar in Virginia

accompanied by a very old woman he was planning to trick into buying the car for him. When questioned, he veryingly identified the woman as his mother and godmother. And like, it was such an obvious scam that I think it's like the car dealers who turn him in. And like, if you're too shady for a car salesman, holy shit.

You gotta really be doing some, that's like a guy at a gun store, not selling you a gun. You have to have, you have to be really, really putting out bad vibes. Where was it? Where was it? This is in like Virginia. Oh, wow. Use car dealers somewhere in Virginia was like, no.

Maybe it wasn't used, I don't know. Yeah, no, not gonna do it. Not gonna do it. And this is why we're not gonna be able to do a whole episode on Dr. Love. He gets caught very early, right? He flew too close to the sun, and now he's kind of, he's dropped out of the medical stuff

and he's just another incompetent serial scammer. Obviously, prison did not help him. Whatever he had that made him wanna do this in the first place, it just made worse. And now he's like fucked up probably because prison's traumatic. And he just, so he's just keeps doing other scams. He gets released in 2020 and he's immediately arrested again for trying to defraud his new employer by having like payments from shipping companies diverted to his private account. It was all, these are all like bad cons. And like,

I read one article with a quote from him where he's just like sobbing. He's like, sorry, please don't send me back to jail. It's a fucking bummer. Cause like, this kid did his fucked up, but he was also 18 and like, clearly locking him up did not, it hasn't made it better, you know?

I mean, I'm torn. Cause on one hand, if I wasn't a doctor, I might appreciate this, you know, little rascal for what he's been up to, I might appreciate this, you know, little rascal for what he's been up to. But it's not rascal. It's bad. Yeah. But he is a naughty, naughty young man. Yeah. And to use what little goodwill we still have as doctors and abuse it makes me very upset. So it is. I'm torn. I'm torn on this one, but I am sort of glad that he is At least a name that people hopefully recognize and can Google and could be like this guy is full of shit

I mean, that's certainly important. I just am also like well fuck locking him up He just keeps doing cons like what do you like clearly? Whatever the salute if you want if the solution is this kid is not able to like do cons anymore You're left with either just put him, lock him up forever, which doesn't seem right or something else. I don't really know what that else is, but putting him in jail for two years did not stop him from trying to hurt people.

It does seem like the fact that he is now kind of a famous con artist has made it easy to catch him. So that's clearly part of like publicizing this is clearly part of the solution, right? Anyway, when I first came about this story and the next one we're going to talk about, which is much more severe, much more severe. Oh my God, it's one of the worst things I've ever heard of in the medical profession, Kaba.

Again, I was just gonna cover these as kind of, here's like a potpourri episode of some fake doctors. But both of these people we're gonna talk about today, Malachi and the frauds we're about to discuss, got away with what they did because they abused the NPI system. And that tickled something in the back of my brain. And as I started digging around, I came to a realization,

but I'm gonna take you to that process organically. I just want people to know there's something more here. This is not just going to be like an assortment of fucked up tales, right? So the next place we're going to go is the tragic story of the Jenkins family, Sherry Ann and Oliver. Now, Oliver was a real doctor, the only one we will be talking about in this episode, right?

He was an ENT, ear, nose and throat specialist. But that, you know, you got to stare down a lot of people's nasty throats to do that job, right? And more importantly, doing that does not pay enough for the comfort of Mrs. Sherri-Ann Jenkins, right? This is going to be a problem for her, you know? It's not a bad paying gig though. I'm curious.

I'm listening. It's not a bad paying gig though. I'm curious. I'm listening. You're right. You think you could live very comfortably, especially since Sherrienne is not a medical doctor, but she is a PhD. Now I can't say in what, I haven't found any evidence as to what, but like real newspapers cite her as being a PhD.

Universal Life Church. Yeah, maybe Universal Life Church, I don't know. She was born in 1959 and in November of 2013, when she was around 54 years old, she and her husband started a section. So her husband works for the Toledo Clinic. That's how it's named in like the court filings. And they started a cognitive center at the Toledo Clinic.

So you've got this real clinic where there are multiple real doctors doing real procedures and really treating patients. And her husband, a real doctor, starts a cognitive center there. Now, you might think that's a little odd because he's an ENT doctor, right? The ear, nose, and throat are important, but they are notably not the brain. I'm waiting to see how they connected this. Yeah.

But I think Sherry-Ann is, she has like some, like her PhD is in like some sort of neuroscience sort of thing, but it's not like, she's not, again, not at all a medical doctor. So Sherry is the one who's actually doing all of the work at the cognitive center, but she's using her husband's practitioner number,

his NPI number to invoice Medicare. Now she is doing the exams herself. She is doing the treatment herself. She is prescribing medicine herself. She's just using her husband's NPI number. That alone is several kinds of fraud. Super bad. You are not supposed to be doing that. Super bad. People go to school for this sort of thing. I mean, and doctors will work with nurse practitioners,

physicians assistants, they work with non-doctors to do these things. But you don't work with a PhD who has no medical training to do these things. Exactly, especially when you're talking about weird cognitive, rare cognitive things, it's very likely that you would have a real doctor who might work with someone who's got a PhD in neuroscience

and that person would contribute to them figuring out what to do, but the doctor is still the one doing the diagnosis and whatnot and filing these things. From what I can discern from past reporting and court records, the actual scam here was very simple, very simple and very vile. The Jenkinses found out that one of the things Medicare pays really well for is ordering pet scans and diagnosing people with Alzheimer's. It's a good payment that you get for doing these things, right? Because the Medicare rates for the tests that you have to do this are pretty good, and because

most people find Alzheimer's the most terrifying diagnosis imaginable, if you tell them that they have Alzheimer's, they will immediately agree to whatever kind of ongoing treatment you tell them they need to take, right? But in part because they're just kind of overwhelmed with the numb shock that comes with getting diagnosed. Like that is a, your life, at least in the way most people see it,

I'm sure there have been, I dealt with, I have a family history of, well, we thought it was Alzheimer's. It turned out to be Lewy body, but for the whole time that she lived with us, we thought my grandmother had Alzheimer's. They look very similar. So I'm aware of like how jarring this is and what a kind of a disorienting thing this is, especially if you're younger when it happens, right? So they seem to be taking advantage of both of these facts. Number one, the rates that we get for doing the tests to diagnose Alzheimer's are really good, right? And number two, if you tell someone they have Alzheimer's, it shocks them enough that they

don't think too much about what else you're going to start asking them, right? These two things are kind of key to the con. So I guess it's possible that Sherri Anne is to some extent deluded about her capabilities, that she really thought that she was diagnosing some of these people because some of the people she diagnosed with Alzheimer's did turn out to have Alzheimer's. Now that's not so weird, nor does it really hint that she was actually more competent than you might think because this is a cognitive clinic that specialized in people who are having like memory issues, right? And if that's your business,

a decent number of the people who come to you will in fact have Alzheimer's, right? But what's important is that while some of the folks she diagnosed did have the thing she diagnosed them with, she was giving out the diagnosis like candy to basically everyone who came in with any kind of memory issue, right? And not only was she billing for the tests

that would have been necessary if you were looking for Alzheimer's, she would bill for tests that were unnecessary even if that is what you were doing. And she was not actually performing these tests, right? Now, telling someone that they have Alzheimer's when they don't is one of the worst things that you can do to a person.

And this quote from an article in the Chicago Tribune Alzheimer's when they don't is one of the worst things that you can do to a person. This quote from an article in the Chicago Tribune gets across how disorienting her diagnoses were to the patients that she was tricking. Quote, Sean Blasek knew a string of concussions from high school football and boxing was catching up with him. He would go days without sleeping and was forgetting how to tie his shoes. Still, at age 33, he was stunned after being told he had Alzheimer's disease. He started planning out who would take care of his four kids if something happened to his wife,

and he thought about how hard it would be for them when he could no longer recognize his family. So he stuffed fistfuls of sleeping pills into a bottle and wrote himself a note, vowing to swallow all of them if he wasn't able to remember the names of his children. Oh, Jesus. That is fucking devastating. It's so fucking devastating. Because again, it's one of these situations where there is like this gray zone, where it's a hard, a lot of times these neurological diagnoses

are really difficult to do. Of course, of course. And that's why we have neurologists, like specifically, and psychiatrists too, who specifically work in these areas. And again, when there's any sort of doubt, when there's any sort of question, these people come in and they fill that space.

And that's what's, oh, it's so terrible. 33 year old preparing to end his life if he has one bad day. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a fucking nightmare. But you know what's not a nightmare, Kaveh? Ah, I'm gonna guess it's the wonderful products and or services that support this program.

That's right. We are sponsored by the concept of not being a professional boxer. So please avoid that. It turns out it's very bad for you. That's right. Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to NPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration

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and listeners like you. Whether it's relationships, friend advice, or figuring out how to navigate life's transitions, we'll talk through it all together. Listen to the bright side from Hello Sunshine every weekday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, New York City needed a tough cop like Detective Louis Scarcella. Putting bad guys away. There's no feeling like it in the world. He was

the guy who made sure the worst killers were brought to justice. That's one version. This guy is a piece of sh**. Derek Hamilton was put away from murder by Detective Scarcella. In prison, Derek turned himself into the best jailhouse lawyer of his generation. The Lord was my girlfriend. This is my only way to freedom. Derek and other convicted murderers started a law was my girlfriend. This is my only way to freedom. Derek and

other convicted murderers started a law firm behind bars. We never knew we had the same cop in the case. Scarcella. We got to show that he's a corrupt cop. They could go f*** themselves. I'm C. Fishman and I'm'm Dax Devlin-Ross. And this is The Burden. Listen to new episodes of The Burden on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive bonus content, subscribe to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts.

We're back. What if instead of face punching, boxing was all dick punches? I would watch that. Is there any way that could go back? If I'm being honest, I would watch that. Yeah, that seems like a better show, right? Yeah. I mean, no chronic traumatic encephalitis. There's no like, you know, connection to Parkinson's as far as I know.

Yeah. I think just as long as they're okay with the fact that they're probably not gonna have kids, just punch each other in the dick a lot. Yeah, yeah. Just dick punches. Mike Tyson and Jake Paul are the funniest thing they could do right now. I would pay so much money to watch that fight. That would be amazing. Mike Tyson

would just evaporate Jake Paul's junk. It would be gone like when you blow on one of those, those flowers that's got a million little seeds. The end of life. Yeah, the end of life. Do you guys ever watch the slap fights? Like where people like slap each other. Yeah, yeah.

It's like arm wrestling but with slaps. Yeah, sure. That's insane that that's a thing that happens. That's so, I see a couple of these videos where they get so hard that they start to like get into these weird like positions. Okay, well maybe that is bad for you. Yeah, like I think they're having like brain damage

like actively you can see from like the seizures they're having, it's terrible. Sports are fun. I think we should go, I just found out it used to be an Olympic event. It was dueling where you would shoot like wax bullets at each other and you would wear like protective vests.

I think we should go back to that. I feel like there's no, yeah, why not? Why not watch people shoot each other on television with guns that can't kill them? Much better than punching each other's faces until their brains melt. Yeah, I'm listening. I'm open to it.

Yeah, let's do it folks. Anyway, we're back folks. Derailed, absolutely. Well, another of the Jenkins' victims is Deborah Schmidt. Deborah was diagnosed in 2015 by Sherry with Alzheimer's. Now, one of the things you noted is that like, this is tough, these are not diseases that we have a great handle on, so mistakes get made.

And Deborah did what you should do in that situation, she went to another doctor for a second opinion. First, she goes to another guy who works at the clinic, I think that she had just worked with before, James Auberle. And she was like, hey, I don't think I have Alzheimer's, but this guy, this lady says I do. And James counseled her to go back in and is like, well, you know, I'm sure that the clinic is a real clinic

so you should probably just like keep going in. So she goes back to the clinic and she does a cognitive test. And Sherri Anne is like, yeah, you've definitely got Alzheimer's. Even more this time, I checked twice. Even more. Super Alzheimer's, now you have mega Alzheimer's now.

And then says, if you want to slow the advance, the only thing that could help is coconut oil. Oh man, come on, people. I know everyone falls for a scam. I believe it. I believe there's a scam for everybody. I believe it. Oh yeah, for sure. But come on.

Look, there's a lot of great things about coconut oil. It tastes good. I think it's relatively heart healthy. Don't quote me on that. Yeah, I mean, if you want to cook with it, fine. It's not gonna cure your Alzheimer's. Now I did look into this because I was like, I hadn't actually heard of this.

I was like, is this like a thing in like bullshit medicine circles? And it sure is. And the explanation for this is that there is a substance contained in coconut oil, caprylic acid, that may be useful as part of a treatment for Alzheimer's. Studies are ongoing and medicine that contains caprylic acid is in stage two clinical trials.

Now, number one, that doesn't mean that it works, but number two, that's not the same as coconut oil halting Alzheimer's, right? This is a super important point. And if I can just make a quick stop here. What'll happen a lot in medicine is you'll see a headline that'll say like, this spice will help with this cancer. And where in reality, it's like maybe some component

that's in this food or this spice may have something in it that if taken out and produced in a different way and given to you in the right way might, if the studies show it. But in reality, for example, everyone talked about turmeric, how it helps your liver. But in reality, there is one component of it that does seem to help. But when you take it, it gets broken down into an inactive component that doesn't help your liver. So taking it like orally, taking it for food, great. These things are oftentimes harmless. Sometimes they are harmful, but usually they're harmless. But the studies aren't necessarily there yet to prove that they help. In this case, this acid, if it's

studied and it shows to be helpful in specific ways, it won't be getting it through coconut oil. It'll be like a compound of it that's really in high quantities that you could take. So it's not to be, when you read these headlines that say something like, you know, oh, eating this blank thing will help your diabetes. I mean, there might be some kernel of truth to it, but it's a long way from that to something clinically important.

I beg people to keep that in mind. It's the thing like people only do this with foods, right? Cause if you hear, hey, they found a spider in the Amazon that's venom is going to, can be like, we think will be part, could be used to like make a cancer treatment, right? Well, you understand that what that means is that there's some compound in the venom that when isolated and added probably to a cocktail

of other compounds might be useful in some sort of cancer treatment. You don't believe, well, if I've got cancer, I need to fly to the Amazon and get that spider to bite me, right? That's not, but if you hear that like a compound and fucking avocados might be a useful part of a cancer treatment, you'll always get grifters being like,

don't go to the doctor for your cancer, eat a million avocados. And no, that's not how avocados work. That's not how cancer works. Please don't do this. Yeah, exactly. And that is the case with this, right? There is no evidence whatsoever that coconut oil itself

can stop or halt the progression of Alzheimer's. A lot of this myth took off in 2015, which is the year that this is at. That's why she says it, right? Because it was in vogue then. And it's in vogue thanks to Dr. Mary Newport. Dr. Mary Newport started claiming that a regimen of coconut oil had given her, quote,

a few extra good years with her husband after he was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. I am sure Mary's case is very sad, but there is no evidence to support the claim made on the website Us Against Alzheimer's when it covered her story. Quote, what if a spoonful of coconut oil each day were all it took to reverse or slow down

the symptoms of Alzheimer's? Now, there is research as to whether or not just coconut oil itself might have a positive impact on Alzheimer's. Research does not mean evidence, it means research. I found a 2022 article on CTV News announcing the start of a study by the Health Bird Alzheimer's Institute to study the impact of coconut oil

versus a placebo on 65 Alzheimer's patients. That article notes that it is the first clinical trial of its kind, but also admits, there is currently no clinical data showing the benefits of coconut oil on the prevention and treatment of dementia. Newport, whose husband Steve was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at age 51, said she began to see improvements

after yada, yada, yada, right? So that's all there is right now. There is a study that has not, we have no evidence on, and there is no actual evidence that just coconut oil helps. This lady felt like it helped her husband. And I don't have any problem with like, yeah, sure, do a study, right? See if you find anything.

I do have a problem with blasting the internet with like, take a spoonful of coconut oil. Now, if you're also doing treatment, and you just add a spoonful of coconut oil, sure, if that makes you feel better, there's no harm to it. You're not gonna damage anybody by giving them a spoonful of coconut oil each day, but like don't do it in lieu of medical treatments.

Right, yeah. And don't also pretend people have Alzheimer's when they're not. If I could also add one thing to that for the listeners, if you ever feel like you need to get a second opinion, do so. Yes. You're not gonna offend your doctor.

Like every doctor has a patient go seek a second opinion. That is okay. We want what's best for, we're supposed to want what's best for you. And if some other doctor has a better idea of how to do that, we're all for it. So if you feel like some, sometimes it's even if you like what the doctor's telling you, but you still want to get another opinion. We understand if a doctor doesn't get that, that's on them. That's weird. And most of us will get it. Yeah, it's one of those things like, yeah, probably unreasonable to go to a second opinion

if you've got a flu or whatever. But like Alzheimer's is a big deal. And like I said, like they misdiagnosed my grandma. Now, given the state of Alzheimer's and Lewy body treatment in the early 2000s, I don't think it would have made any difference. Like, you're not gonna like give them, like we just didn't have a good handle on either of them. You know, that's just the reality of the situation.

So I don't know if Ms. Schmidt, who's the woman who's gotten diagnosed with Alzheimer's by Sherri-Ann and then told to take coconut oil, I don't know if she like Googled around and was like, there's no fucking evidence that this shit is an Alzheimer's treatment. But, and I kind of think that's what happened because she refuses to take it, right?

She's like, no, I'm not gonna fucking take your coconut oil. I don't trust your diagnosis. Sherriann Jenkins reported her as non-compliant in her official paperwork and chastised Schmidt, then billed Medicare $1,267 for the visit. Oh my God. Now, I found Schmidt's experience chronicled in a lawsuit against the Jenkinses,

filed on behalf of Schmidt and others by the United States government This is not super important, but it is very funny to me how this lawsuit opens now comes the United States of America Buying through relators Deborah A Schmidt and Mary Kay Smith for their complaint state and a very the following. I just love that I just love that wrestling intro. There's so much more exciting than I imagined. Now comes the United States of America, 310 pounds and six foot seven, baby. Wow. So the good news here is that Schmidt

did seek a second opinion. She did not just take Jenkins's diagnosis, which is why again, it's important to do that. And in fact, a team of doctors at the Cleveland Clinic see her and they're like, what the fuck is this Jenkins lady talking about? You're fine, right? And in fact, it's such a, like she goes to one doctor

and eventually a whole team of them look her over and are like, yeah, you don't have Alzheimer's, right? You're just kind of old and forgetting a couple of things, but like, there's no evidence of Alzheimer's. So when she learns this, she goes back to the Toledo Clinic and she tells that neurologist she had been talking to, Dr. Auberle, hey, Jenkins fucked up, to which the good doctor replied,

I don't even wanna hear that woman's name. Now, this is a story that's worth more reporting. I'd really like to see a good documentary about this case. I'm sure one will come out eventually because I don't really fully know how there's, you certainly can see that like over time, some of the other doctors at the clinic outside of the cognitive clinic realize something shady is going on.

I don't know if they're aware, I don't think they're aware that she is actually diagnosing patients and carrying out tests, right? Because she's using her husband's NPI and she's not supposed to be doing that. But they seem to be aware that like, she's full of shit. So another client is Mary Smith. Mary sees an article on the Toledo's cognitive clinic

made up as part of a PR blitz by the clinic that the Jenkinses were running, right? Mary had been concerned about her memory and she saw an ad in a local magazine that claimed Sherrianne used quote, neurocognitive testing coupled with PET CT scans that allowed her to see what part of a brain is functioning well and design protocols for each patient.

Now, I'm not a doctor, is that more or less how it's supposed to work? That seems like basically how it's supposed to work. PET scans for Alzheimer's? So that's not how it's supposed to, see, I'm not the doctor here, so that's not right. I mean, I'm not a neurologist, so it's a bit out of my wheelhouse,

but CT scans for sure. I mean, it's interesting. You can make an argument like what activity is lighting up, what metabolic activity lights up. So a pet scan will look at metabolic activity. So if you're looking for cancer, for example, you like do a PET scan and it'll light up in certain parts of your body

where there's lots of metabolic activity, lots of things turning over, like a cancer would do, lots of growth, lots of turnover. So I don't know, maybe they do it for the brain. I don't know, I'd have to ask a neurologist, but it seems like very hand wavy. What's important for this story is that they're lying about doing those tests in large part,

because using those machines is expensive. You get to bill Medicare for them, but it's still like a thing, right? And you don't, your clinic usually does not have one, right? Maybe the whole clinic has access to one, but like your little cognitive center, you don't have your own. And it seems like the jingles are trying to avoid

kind of interacting with the rest of the Toledo clinic as much as possible. So when Smith comes in, instead of giving her a PET or a CT scan, she gives her a verbal test, tells her she's failed, and then she finds an old MRI scan of Smith's brain that was just on file at the clinic, not a current one, and diagnoses her with Alzheimer's based on that, right?

So that's all a little shady. It's all very shady. You know, I'm sorry, just to cut in, because I just looked up real quick. So it looks like, because there's different types of PET scans, the type that we normally look at is called FDG, which is like the concentration of glucose

and looks at like metabolic activity. So the one you apparently can use, and again, a neurologist is gonna correct me on this one, for this is amyloid PET to measure the buildup of amyloids, like a protein that can build up, it's one of the key hallmarks of Alzheimer's. So it can look for buildup of this protein. So there is a use for a specific type of PET CT scan.

Okay, okay, yeah. Sorry, I had to get that out there. No, no, and after this, she orders a real pet scan for Smith. And this again shows why she didn't like to do that because it puts Smith in the same room as a real doctor, the attending radiologist, right? And the radiologist does the pet scan, is like, hey, you know, this isn't my wheelhouse,

but like everything looks fine to me. You know, just pay, like you should have your doctor look this over, because they're supposed to be the expert. But from what I can see, it doesn't look like you have Alzheimer's. So Smith goes home and is like, woo, that's a load off my mind. The radiologist said I'm probably fine. And then later that night, Jenkins calls her at home and is like, the radiologist was wrong. You've got the Heimers. You got to come back tomorrow and bring your whole family with you. Do doctors not say you've got the Heimers when they're diagnosing Alzheimer's, Kava?

They should, if I'm being fair, it's not bad. And she's like, yeah, bring in your whole family. They all need to be here, right? Cause you can't trust your brain no more. So Smith does this and she tells her family and brings them in and Jenkins like sits her down. She's like, you have Alzheimer's and she tells her family, you all have to take care of her now, right?

She can't be on her own. You know, you're no longer an independent person. Also, I'm going to have to do a telephone consult with you every three weeks, and an office visit every three months for the rest of the time that she's alive. And of course, Sherri Anne, this is the situation she wants to lock every patient into,

because that means you get to bill like 1600 bucks for every one of these visits. And that's a really regular income stream. She's just locked in- Wow, it's medical gas lighting. 20 some grand a year for herself just with that one patient. It's gas lighting at the highest level. It's like amazing.

And there's no real cost to the clinic, but Sherri's time, right? Cause this is just this person coming in and being told, hey, take some fucking coconut oil, right? So she effectively, and again, obviously you can see if you can do that with 10 people, 200 grand a year, 20 people, 400 grand a year, right? Like this is like a sizable amount of money

that you can make doing this in addition to the upfront cost, which is probably in the 10 to 20 grand of just like getting them diagnosed. But it also, what you're looking at here, if you're talking about on a one-to-one basis, she is upending and destroying people's lives for about the price of a nice used car every year. That's what's actually going on here. So here's what the court case against the Jenkins' lists as the prescription she gave

this woman for Alzheimer's treatment. SA Jenkins prescribed Smith take six teaspoons of coconut oil per day, an all-organic GMO-free diet and daily exercise. SA Jenkins advised Smith she only had three to five more years left to work before the disease would take its toll and requested that Smith and her husband volunteer at the Alzheimer's Adult Daycare so they could see where Smith was heading in the near future. That's so horrible. Do you want to know what I bet you she was doing?

She was setting the groundwork for the fact that, because I don't think she really believed this. I'm getting the sense that this is all a scam. She's not a true believer and just is deluded about her abilities. But what she's probably hoping to do is to be like five years down the road, be like, I guess the treatment's really helping.

Cause yeah. Yeah. Oh man. Now that, that would be, thankfully she doesn't get to that point, but I honestly- I'm a really good doctor. That would be, that would be kind of funny. Yeah.

So Oliver Jenkins, the actual doctor, again, and her husband, Cherian's husband, never saw Smith, and he never saw most of the people that his wife was diagnosing. Obviously, Smith is distraught when she gets this diagnosis, and she also thankfully seeks a second opinion from a real doctor who looks at her and is like, this doesn't look like Alzheimer's to me,

but hey, we'll do a PET scan just to make sure. And oh yeah, still no Alzheimer's. But because this guy's a real doctor, he's like, you know what? You have one positive diagnosis. I showed nothing, but let's bring a third doctor in just to be really sure that you don't have Alzheimer's. So he refers her to yet another doctor

who backs up the confirmation that she's fucking fine, right? The Toledo Clinic had billed Medicare $4,036 for this bullshit diagnosis. So Smith is furious, right? But at this point, she's also like, well, maybe I just ran into a bad doctor who like fucked up, right? Like, it's not clear from one case as the individual,

is this lady just like shitty at her job? Or have I fallen into some elaborate scheme? So when Sherriann calls her and is like, hey, so when are you coming in for your every rest of your life visits, to get told to take coconut oil, you gotta let me treat you. Smith is like, fuck off, we're not going to you anymore.

So not a Dr. Jenkins sends Smith a letter, quote, our physician-patient relationship is ineffective and I can no longer continue to provide services to you as your provider. Therefore, this letter will serve as notice of my intent to discontinue our physician-patient relationship. Now, this seems to have rubbed, that does seem,

is that something you do? I've never done that. I've never, I mean, I'm trying to think if I've ever fired for lack of better word a patient and maybe it was like one time when I got Threatened by somebody who was not quite, you know, it's a good place So they and that might be the only time but I didn't write them like a letter I don't I don't think we do that very commonly No, and this isn't even that because this is the patient says I'm not gonna Go to you anymore, and you send them a letter firing them, which is like

Bafflingly petty the response the correct response is I'm sorry. I hope you find someone who you right yeah, yeah exactly So this seems to have rubbed Smith the wrong way getting this letter So she goes to the radiologist at the Toledo clinic. So at the broader clinic that the cognitive clinic that the Jenkins has run is at. And she's like, hey, you know that pet scan you did that seemed I was fine? Well, here's what happened afterwards, right? So this radiologist tells her, oh yeah, all of the radiologists at the Toledo clinic went to the executive board recently to lodge an official complaint

that Jenkins does not know what she's doing. Their complaint included the line, she has diagnosed everyone with Alzheimer's. And then in the court case, after this is announced, there's an utterly baffling paragraph that I'm hoping you can help me make sense of, Kaveh. The radiologist also stated that S.A. Jenkins had misdiagnosed his own 21-year-old daughter

with Alzheimer's disease. He further stated that he had destroyed all of the medical records pertaining to his daughter and recommended that Smith do the same with regard to her records. What? What's going on there? Hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm confused. So the real Dr. Jenkins, he diagnosed-

The radiologist. He diagnosed a radiologist daughter Yeah, no Sherry Anne the not real doctor right a wife who was not at all any kind of doctor non doctor Diagnoses the radiologists 21 year old daughter with Alzheimer's and then the radiologist said I destroyed all of the medical records Pertaining to my daughter from that case and you should do the same Why would you do that? It does not seem like there's any good reason to do that, unless he was somehow in on the scam.

I don't understand. Why would you? First of all, you never destroy medical records. It's one of those things where the lie is worse than the actual act. You just can't do that. We're not supposed to do that. Just like, we're not supposed to do that. Why would a radiologist take his daughter, a 21 year old for this questionable clinic? Why would he not look at the images himself? Why would he not feel like 21 is sort of,

I mean, there is early onset Alzheimer's. Come on, happens. But come on, 21, you're a doctor, man. Something's fishy, something's clearly like, something is up. Yeah, I mean, he is saying that he and a bunch of others went to the clinic leadership and said, this person's a scammer. So it seems like he, and I kinda suspect a thing with his daughter could be as simple as like,

maybe there's a work party, right? Wait, wait, wait, wait, Was he using his daughter who he knew was like super healthy as like a test to catch that? Maybe that's it. I also think it could be like, maybe there's like a work party and Jenkins runs into his daughter and just like in the process of a conversation,

diagnosis her with all cyberspacition. Slip into my CT scan over here for a moment. Yeah. I don't know CT scan over here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I Whatever it is sketch again. I know we have like a bunch of professional journalists and TV people. Here's a great This is like a solid six episode Netflix documentary Right like you could or at least a good tight 90 minutes, right? Like somebody do so because I want there's a lot of questions. I do half about this still unanswered Yeah, hire Robert and I just to be the CT test. Yes, absolutely Like somebody do, cause I want, there's a lot of questions I do have about this still unanswered. Yeah.

Hire Robert and I just to be the CT techs. Absolutely. Oh my God. We'll choose so much scenery. Absolutely. Yeah. And bring in Pedro Pascal to be, I don't know, somebody. I just want to have lunch with him. The daughter, bring him in to be the 20 year old daughter.

Bring him in to be the daughter. He has range. Lee Pace can be Smith or someone. I just want to have one really good lunch out of this project, people. It's the most you thing that has ever been said. The lawyer in this case is David Zoll. And as part of his claim against her,

he noted that at least 30 people were misdiagnosed and aware of it, right? That like we have tracked down 30 people who were told they had Alzheimer's and didn't, which is, you know, potentially like 600 grand a year, right? And ongoing visits and stuff conservatively. But also he's like, that's just who we know. This lady, they were doing this for four years.

There's an unknown number of people that may have been diagnosed by her, right? A lot of these people are old. There's a good chance a non-trivial number of people died thinking they had Alzheimer's, you know? But we're just like, they were like 80 when they came in, right? So they didn't have a lot longer. Unraveling who was told what has proved to be a difficult process. And Zoll claims there's, and again, that's the lawyer claims there's also evidence that Sherri Anne

overbuild patients for the fake care she was giving them in addition to faking their care. His take was that she's simply greedy, right? Their cognitive center grew a lot faster than anyone expected, and it made a lot of money for the larger Toledo Clinic. And I think to the extent that there's maybe some weird shady stuff going on, right? That's sort of insinuated in that paragraph. Maybe the radiologists weren't able to get anything done

to get her fired because clinic leadership was like, well, we don't really give a shit, the money's coming. I don't actually know. What really sticks with me is how predatory the process was. Sherri-Ann and her husband were not just giving fake diagnoses to scam Medicare. They were outright like hunting people. Zoll claims, quote, many times she would see the first person and have them bring in their

whole family, Zoll said. And many times she would diagnose the whole family, right? Because Alzheimer's can have a genetic component at least I don't know that it always does, but like there are people for whom it runs in the family. So she's like, your whole family needs to get tested. And then boom, boom, boom, boom, everybody's got Alzheimer's, you know?

She's like doing the Oprah free car thing, but with fucking Alzheimer's. You have Alzheimer's. Yeah. You know, and unfortunately this process is not just reckless and cruel, it's deadly. And I'm gonna quote now from reporting in the Chicago Tribune.

Kaye Taner was diagnosed with Alzheimer's on her second visit to Jenkins and then referred five or six friends and family members to her office, including her husband of 48 years. All were told they had the disease, she said, but her husband, Gary, took it hardest. He's got a smile that just lights up the room and I never saw it

again, she said. He just sunk in his chair. To me, he never stood up again. He was never tall again. He gave up. Gary fell into depression, spending his final week sitting in a chair with his hands in his lap until he went into their garage and shot himself in the head, she said. An autopsy did not show any signs of Alzheimer's. This monster, I mean, early Alzheimer's, again, I'm not a neurologist, but my general understanding is that it's, I think under the age of like 65,

and there is like a familial onset Alzheimer's, but it is really rare. And it's like probably less than like 1% of the total cases that you're gonna see. And like for her to take advantage of this and give these people these crushing diagnoses, because things have gotten a little bit better and we do have new medicines kind of coming down

like the pipeline, but it's still a really bad thing to get, especially in earlier ages. It's so cynical, so callous that they would do it to make, I mean, I don't know, I know this is so stupid and I'm like on the wrong show to ask this, but how do people live with themselves when they do something like that? Like I don't understand like the, how that, how in her mind, she was probably the victim, she's the hero of her own story. I understand, everyone is.

But how is she spinning this? That's the part I don't understand. You know, part of me is like, maybe it was a long con and she's like, it won't really hurt them. I'll tell them they're cured and then I'll start selling fucking olive or not olive, coconut oil supplements, I don't know. But maybe it is just like, I don't care about people

and I want money, you know? That is sometimes the answer. Maybe she was deluded, right? Maybe there's some sort of mental illness she's got going on, but honestly, I feel like that's probably less likely than just like this person was a monster. Yeah. I don't know.

But I mean, at this point, I don't know that we'll maybe if somebody does a deeper reporting on it, we'll get, you know, I did everything I could. I read like the court cases and stuff, but this is a doctor death like, yeah, yeah, someone's gotta turn this into that. Yeah. Yeah, please do folks. I want to know more about this. So the lawsuits against the Jenkins is inspired an investigation by the FBI, right?

And once they start snooping around, it's over pretty soon for Oliver and Sherrienne. These people are not criminal masterminds. They have not hidden their tracks very well. The feds press charges as all these civil cases wind through the court system, and the Jenkinses are indicted by a grand jury. More than 60 patients and family members who had been inaccurately diagnosed would ultimately come forward. USA Today notes that in addition to Gary's suicide, one patient took a six month leave of absence from work

and lost her job. Another retired early and lost his retirement benefits. One man sold his house so that he could move to be next to his children. Another client was placed in a nursing home. The good news is that both Jenkinses were found guilty of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and healthcare fraud. Sherry was fined $25,000.

Oliver was fined $25,000. Both were sentenced to time in prison, 71 months for Sherry and 41 months for Oliver. Which is, you know, I don't know what the right sentence is, but those are both real sentences, you know. I'm assuming he probably lost his license. Oh God, yeah, yeah, you would assume, right? You know, that's the good long-term solution for that. I assume that the civil cases are going to take

a lot of money out of these people's hides, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's all a huge bummer, right? Much more of a bummer than Malachi's story, which is like kind of sad that he's ruined his life a little, but like more, mostly just like, wow, what a shithead, right? This is really fucking sad. But it also, you know, again, I wanna note,

cause we're gonna come to this in part two, these stories are not isolated incidences. They are all in fact tied together in a certain way. And specifically, they are tied together to a series of things that explains why your healthcare is so expensive, why it is so hard to get seen, and why it is hard to find in-network care when you need it. All of this relates to why the Jenkinses were allowed to do what they did. And that's what we're going gonna talk about in part two.

But first, Cave. Yeah, I'm here. Do you speak French? A peu. I'm gonna take that as a yes. What do you, where do you go? Who are you? What do you do?

Je suis de San Francisco. That means I'm from San Francisco. Je suis un doctor and a podcaster. That's French for I am a doctor and a podcaster. And that's the extent of my French. I have a podcast called The House of Pod. You can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts. You can follow me if you like on Twitter,

at the House of Pod. I just started making TikToks because I'm a complete sellout bitch. Oh, I love it. No, because you're an outlaw. I'm crazy. And I do a little bit of medical stuff there, talking about like medical topics

that people are interested in. And the show is fun. If you like sort of delving into bastards of medicine, we do a little bit of that, but we also talk some of the good stuff about medicine. We talk about what's new and hot and we'll have fun guests. Like I have an upcoming show with the guy from Eve six and Dr. Peter Hotez to talk about COVID.

So that'll be fun. So the guy from Eve six is my primary care physician. He's pretty savvy. So I wouldn't put it past him. He's pretty cool. And of course, Robert's been on the show, so yeah, listen to it. I think you'll like it anywhere you do your podcast.

Check it out. And you know, interesting fact, Kaveh, the French language actually has more than 30 different words for podcaster. That makes sense. And they all are something to do with like les petit mille, I think. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And they all are something to do with like Le Petit Mil, I think. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. That's one of them. Anyway, everybody, go to hell. I love you. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi friends, I'm Danielle Robay. And I'm Simone Boyce. And we're here to introduce you to The Bright Side, a new kind of daily podcast that's guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we're bringing you conversations about culture, the latest trends, inspiration, and so much more. We'll hear from celebrities, authors, experts, and listeners like you.

Whether it's relationships, friend advice, or figuring out how to navigate life's transitions, big and small, we'll talk through it together. Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine every weekday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to NPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the hosts in journalism who've always spoken truth to power.

Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories, Black Truths on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 90s, New York detective Luis Garcela locked up the worst criminals. Putting bad guys away. There's no feeling like it. Then jailhouse lawyers took aim, led by Derek Hamilton. Scarcella took me to the precinct. Alive.

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