Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Six arrested in sober home scheme
Feds allege operators billed for excessive services
While promising to help addicts recover, the operators of several sober homes and addiction centers in Broward and Palm Beach counties allowed them to use drugs, abused their insurance plans and led them into prostitution, according to federal authorities.
Those explosive allegations were outlined Wednesday in a federal complaint charging six people — including the owners of addiction treatment centers in Margate and Lake Worth and the doctors who worked for them — with scheming to defraud the health care system.
On the same day authorities announced criminal charges, federal agents and local police fanned out to raid various locations in Broward and Palm Beach counties, including Reflections Treatment Center in Margate.
The federal investigation targeted sober homes and drug-treatment centers founded by Kenneth Chatman, 46, of Boynton Beach, Michael Bonds, 45, of Delray Beach, and Fransesia Davis, 44, of Lake Worth.
Also charged in the scheme are the treatment centers’ medical directors Joaquin Mendez, 52, of Miramar, and Donald Willems, 40, of We-
ston, along with Laura Chatman, 44, Kenneth Chatman’s wife.
All six appeared before a U.S. magistrate judge on Wednesday in West Palm Beach. Kenneth Chatman and Davis were ordered held without bond. Bonds of $100,000 were set for Laura Chatman, Willems, Bonds and Mendez.
Kenneth Chatman, who is being held without bond, is scheduled to have another bond hearing Thursday.
The businesses founded by Chatman, Bonds and Davis provided illegal kickbacks, coerced residents into prostitution, threatened violence against patients and submitted urine and saliva for screening even when no medical need existed, federal investigators allege.
The trio founded several sober homes, including Stay’n Alive Inc., Redemption Sober House Inc., Total Recovery Sober Living LLC and an unnamed facility at 962 West 43rd St. in West Palm Beach, according to the federal complaint.
Although the sober homes were purportedly drug-free residences, some of the defendants permitted the residents to continue using drugs as long as they attended treatment and submitted to drug testing, federal investigators allege.
Those sober homes lured residents with free rent and gifts and then referred them to drug-treatment centers owned by Kenneth Chatman but titled in the name of Laura Chatman, federal investigators say. Those treatment centers were Reflections Treatment Center in Margate and Journey to Recovery LLC in Lake Worth.
“Where are the rules and regulations of running a sober house?” said Bonds, who runs Redemption Sober House in Delray. “It seems like rules are being made up as we go.”
He said he was in the process of closing his facility, which houses four clients, prior to Wednesday’s raid. “I wasn’t making any money,” he said.
Among those following Wednesday’s developments was Jennifer Flory, of Chicago, whose daughter Alison Flory, 24, attended Reflections. She was living in a sober house when she died in October of what the Broward Medical Examiner’s Office ruled was an overdose of cocaine and carfentanil, a deadly additive.
“I thought she was finally clean and on the right path for the first time,” said Flory. Instead, Flory said, her daughter was being “brokered, going from place to place to place, drug tested every day, and her insurance billed.”
Flory said she suspects her daughter, while a patient at Reflections, was using drugs intermittently. “They were allowing her to fall so they could pick her back up,” said Flory.
The defendants provided services meant solely to maximize insurance reimbursements, according to the federal complaint. In some instances, Chatman and Davis submitted urine and saliva samples from employees instead of urine and saliva from patients, investigators allege.
Chatman and Davis threatened patients with violence and held their car keys, cellphones, medications and food stamps to stop them from leaving, according to the complaint. “More arrests are coming,” said Dave Aronberg, Palm Beach County state attorney.
He called Wednesday’s arrests and raids “a statement that it’s not just the local task force that the rogue sober home owners and treatment center providers have to worry about, it’s the feds as well, because we are all going after them in the same way.”
Mendez, contacted by phone, declined to comment. Willems, Davis and Laura Chatman could not be reached.
If convicted, the defendants face a possible maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Kenneth and Laura Chatman face an additional charge of making a false statement related to a health care matter, which carries a maximum fiveyear sentence.
Young Kim, 47, a groundskeeper at Crossroads strip mall, where Reflections is situated, saw authorities already were raiding the center as early as 8 a.m. Wednesday.
Willems was free on bond in an unrelated state case in which he is accused of prescription drug trafficking and racketeering. He was arrested in December 2012 when he was the primary physician at Pompano Beach Pain Management, which was shuttered months earlier for operating as a pill mill.
Willems is accused of consistently prescribing a combination of oxycodone, alprazolam (Xanax) and noncontrolled drugs, such as ibuprofen and Vitamin D to patients during his April 2011 to April 2012 stint at the clinic. A status hearing in that case is scheduled for Feb. 2.