Author Archives: Debbie Penson
Two from Wellington plead guilty to sober-home fraud scheme
WELLINGTON — Two Wellington residents are facing prison terms after they pleaded guilty in U.S. Federal Court to participating in a multimillion-dollar insurance fraud and money-laundering scheme connected to their ownership of sober homes and a drug-treatment center, the Justice Department said Friday. Tovah Lynn Jasperson, 48, and Alan Martin Bostom, 75, were the owners of… Read More »
Former deputy, state House candidate faces patient brokering charges
A former Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy who left to open a West Palm Beach drug treatment center was arrested Tuesday on 15 counts of patient brokering. Robert “Bobby” Simeone, 46, owner of Epiphany’s Treatment Center and an unsuccessful 2016 candidate for state House, was the latest person arrested by the State Attorney’s Sober Home… Read More »
Accidental injury rises to third leading cause of death in the U.S.
For the first time since records have been kept, preventable injuries have become the third leading cause of death in the United States, the National Safety Council (NSC) announced Wednesday. In fact, data shows that preventable deaths rose 10 percent in 2016. The increase was largely due to an uptick in fatal motor vehicle… Read More »
NBC Left Field: Fake Treatment Centers
https://www.nbcnews.com/leftfield/video/fake-drug-treatment-centers-exploit-addicts-for-insurance-fraud-and-sex-trafficking-1106469443635
JUST IN: 6 more arrested by Sober Home Task Force on patient brokering
The Palm Beach County Sober Home Task force conducted a raid at Palm Beach Recovery & Wellness, a drug treatment center at 6600 S. Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach, Wednesday, March 1, 2017. Six more people were arrested on patient brokering charges Thursday, October 19, 2017, in Delray Beach. (Bruce R. Bennett /… Read More »
Medical Society Joins Fight Against Opioid Epidemic in PBC
After an unprecedented 590 opioid-related deaths in Palm Beach County in 2016, Palm Beach County doctors are joining the battle as a group against the opioid epidemic. The Palm Beach County Medical Society Services, a nonprofit that coordinates education and volunteer activities of the county Medical Society, held its first meeting this week to begin… Read More »
Chatman drug treatment associates owe millions
Conspirators in Kenny Chatman’s sprawling drug treatment criminal enterprise are on the hook for millions of dollars, with one man expected to pay his share of $5.6 million in restitution. Chatman’s operations had a horrifying human cost. People blame his operations for loved ones’ deadly relapses, and prosecutors told how Chatman screwed closed a home’s… Read More »
Florida’s Billion-Dollar Drug Treatment Industry Is Plagued by Overdoses, Fraud
PALM BEACH COUNTY, Florida — For the first responders who found her lifeless body one October morning, 24-year-old Alison Flory was yet another casualty of addiction here on the front line of Florida’s opioid crisis. To her family, she was a daughter, a beloved sister, a goofy bookworm who made them laugh and a… Read More »
Notorious treatment center operator Chatman gets 27 years in prison
WEST PALM BEACH — Kenneth “Kenny” Chatman was a relatively small drug-treatment provider despite the millions he raked in every year, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafaña said Wednesday. But he was “the most dangerous,” she told U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks, and FBI agents “never worked harder” than the last few months of 2016,… Read More »
Woman on Chatman: ‘Men came in and paid him money to rape me.’
Kenny Chatman kept a 19-year-old woman tied down in a house, where more than 100 men raped her, a woman wrote to U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks on Monday. The corrupt drug treatment center operator, who faces up to life in prison when sentenced today, held her for weeks, until she jumped out of… Read More »
