Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just I don't think it's technically murder like if
Speaker 1: nobody saw right, that's at least you know, That's always
Speaker 1: been my stance on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, are we recording?
Speaker 1: Oh shit, welcome back to Behind the Pastards a podcast
Speaker 1: where no one involved with making this episode killed anybody
Speaker 1: in a bar fight in twenty fourteen. Didn't happened. You know,
Speaker 1: nobody saw anything right, So we're good.
Speaker 2: No one can prove Sophia is there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody can prove Sophia about it.
Speaker 2: I would lie for you in court, Robert.
Speaker 1: I know you, and I would throw you under the
Speaker 1: bus Sophie speaking, you know who throws all of us
Speaker 1: under the bus on a regular basis. Insurance our health
Speaker 1: insurance companies.
Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, let me have min Inhaler, you coward. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Sophie and I are.
Speaker 1: We're ETNA, right, Sophie, Yeah, yeah, fuck these people, we're
Speaker 1: both having our Our health insurance did a thing that
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of people have experienced where one
Speaker 1: year suddenly it works completely differently and you have to
Speaker 1: pay for stuff you never had to pay for, even
Speaker 1: though everyone on the phone says nothing has changed and
Speaker 1: your insurance is still the same as it is.
Speaker 2: This isn't a con. We're not being robbed. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: mean to contact the original prescribing doctor. He died in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: Love it all, Love all of this stuff. Love that
Speaker 1: what they're doing is legal. But like somebody who steals
Speaker 1: a fucking I don't know, detergent from a CBS should
Speaker 1: be shot. It's cool stuff. So we talked in episode
Speaker 1: one two different doctor scal like fake doctor scams, right,
Speaker 1: both of which involved the use of NPI numbers people
Speaker 1: basically in one case fake outright faking and case a
Speaker 1: woman who was not a doctor stealing her husband who
Speaker 1: was a doctor's NPI for the purpose of doing fraudulent
Speaker 1: medical stuff.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: As I told you, when I started looking at what
Speaker 1: I thought were kind of disparate cases, I kind of
Speaker 1: uncovered through my research a through line between them and
Speaker 1: I should to be specific, I uncovered other reporting that
Speaker 1: revealed the through line. Right. I did not do this
Speaker 1: on my own air. A lot of this comes down
Speaker 1: to Pro Publica, who's going to be really the source
Speaker 1: for most of what we're talking about today. But I'm
Speaker 1: going to start with the story of doctor David Williams.
Speaker 1: As best as I can tell, he was born in
Speaker 1: Idaho around nineteen sixty three. So we're off to a
Speaker 1: bad start already, folks. His early life was promising so
Speaker 1: far as I can tell. He got a bachelor's and
Speaker 1: then a master's degree in physical education from Boise State,
Speaker 1: and then he moved to Texas A and M, where
Speaker 1: he received his PhD in kinesesiology. Now, as a Texan,
Speaker 1: when I hear somebody went to Texas A and M
Speaker 1: to get a PhD, and being a gym teacher, I
Speaker 1: do think this guy's probably a monster.
Speaker 2: I really wanted to children. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So again, this is a fake doctor. He has
Speaker 1: an actual doctor in that he's a PhD. But this
Speaker 1: is not a medical degree. You are not a physician
Speaker 1: because you have a PhD in kinestesiology, right. Kinnesesiology is
Speaker 1: an actual discipline. It's the study of movement performance and function,
Speaker 1: and it involves a lot of real science. Having an
Speaker 1: understanding of kinnesstesiology involves everything from molecular biology to anatomy,
Speaker 1: and of course the study of how exercise affects the body.
Speaker 1: What kinistesiology is not is a medical discipline, and this
Speaker 1: is going to be very important soon. When he was
Speaker 1: at Boise State, Dave, doctor Dave, He's going to have
Speaker 1: everybody call him. Had been a wrestler, and a pretty
Speaker 1: good one at that. He was an All American and
Speaker 1: academic and All American wrestler or whatever. I don't understand
Speaker 1: the wrestling things he was. He was a good wrestler.
Speaker 1: He claims to have held a state record in powerlifting.
Speaker 1: I can't actually verify this, but the stuff about being
Speaker 1: a pretty good wrestler seems to be verified, So why not.
Speaker 1: Once he graduated in Texas, he got a job working
Speaker 1: as a community college professor in Arlington, and again another
Speaker 1: black mark against him. I don't know if you people
Speaker 1: have ever been to Arlington, but stay away. I nearly
Speaker 1: went to college there. I showed up on campus one day.
Speaker 1: I did that commute from Dallas one day and was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing college in Arlington.
Speaker 2: Fuck this shit, Arlington, Glenston. Even throwing a lot of
Speaker 2: this is like a deep Texas couple of episodes that
Speaker 2: we've been doing.
Speaker 1: As a twenty some year resident of Texas, there's one
Speaker 1: place in that state. I'll go to bat four and
Speaker 1: it's Marfa, so never heard of it. Oh, it's great town.
Speaker 1: Once he graduates in Texas, he got a job working
Speaker 1: as a community college professor in Iarlton right, and the
Speaker 1: a Pro Publica investigation into him describes this job as
Speaker 1: well paying, which you don't hear often in reference to
Speaker 1: community college gigs. I don't know what exactly he's doing there,
Speaker 1: but I believe he gets up to a con and
Speaker 1: that may be why he was making a lot of
Speaker 1: money as a community college professor. We don't really have
Speaker 1: any details about this, but his wife, Amy Lankford, who
Speaker 1: married him about the time that he starts this job,
Speaker 1: later told Pro Publica that after they've been together a
Speaker 1: few years, he got fired suddenly and she never found
Speaker 1: out why. Republica just notes that he was fired for
Speaker 1: reasons hidden by a confidential settlement and by Williams himself,
Speaker 1: who refused to reveal them even to his wife. So
Speaker 1: my guess is some sort of scam with like admissions
Speaker 1: money or something faking students.
Speaker 2: I don't know he does tell your wife's I mean,
Speaker 2: that's a hard one to you.
Speaker 1: You might take that that might be folks, that might
Speaker 1: be a read a warning sign. If you get married
Speaker 1: to somebody and they get fired and there's some sort
Speaker 1: of weird legal case and they refuse to ever tell you,
Speaker 1: probably that.
Speaker 2: Probably a problem there. If she's been honest. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's not right. That's probably a problem. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So whatever got him canned from this first gig was
Speaker 1: very likely fraud, because his next pivot was to start
Speaker 1: begging friends and family to invest money into a new
Speaker 1: business venture. Once they donated, he would pressure them to
Speaker 1: get their friends to invest in what he described as
Speaker 1: a sure thing. And the gist of this business was
Speaker 1: that he had bought an old Win Dixie grocery store
Speaker 1: and he was going to turn it into a health
Speaker 1: club called Docs gymab.
Speaker 2: He didn't grow up in the South.
Speaker 1: Win Dixie is, like i'd call it, like a second
Speaker 1: or third tier grocery chain. It's better than Pigley Wiggley,
Speaker 1: but it's not as good as agb Right, fred Meyer.
Speaker 2: You're just fucking making up names now, yeah, fred Meyer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's broadly, it's a little it's it's not quite
Speaker 1: as nice as a fred Meyer. Oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not as nice as a fred Wi.
Speaker 2: I would say, no idea it's a California I'm familiar with,
Speaker 2: like three and one of an alpha beta baby.
Speaker 1: Four I'd meet every now and then, like a couple
Speaker 1: of times in my life, other people who shopped at
Speaker 1: Pigley Wiggley's when they were kids, and like, it's like
Speaker 1: what I imagine it was like in like the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties, running into someone else who'd fought at Bestone
Speaker 1: where you're like, oh, yeah, we share a special secret
Speaker 1: trauma together.
Speaker 2: What a reference.
Speaker 1: I am working on a reboot of Band of Brothers
Speaker 1: that's just about shopping at a Pigley Wiggly in rural Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: So check out for that one. Spielberg's attached to direct.
Speaker 1: We're very excited, ye, So whatever is going on with this?
Speaker 1: Because I think there's some I'm sure there's some sort
Speaker 1: of scam here beyond just that this is a bad
Speaker 1: idea for a business because a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: like kind of midway through the deal, after he's taken
Speaker 1: a bunch of people's money, the deal he had set
Speaker 1: up to buy this, when Dixie collapses and everyone who
Speaker 1: had invested lost everything, right, a local newspaper published an
Speaker 1: article on the whole titled what's up with Docs, because
Speaker 1: that was going to be the name of the gym,
Speaker 1: because he called himself Doc.
Speaker 2: I see where they're going with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can put together those pieces.
Speaker 1: I've seen it referenced, but I have not found the article,
Speaker 1: so I didn't come across more information there. But the
Speaker 1: fact that he has just taken a bunch of investments
Speaker 1: from their close friends and family and then made all
Speaker 1: that money go away put some strain on the marriage,
Speaker 1: as you might imagine, and by two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: after fourteen years together and two children, they started divorce proceedings.
Speaker 1: Amy's father, Jim Pratt, was a finance MBA, and she
Speaker 1: had him over to help her with the complex, nightmarish
Speaker 1: process of divorcing. She asked him to help her recover
Speaker 1: a file on her computer which was acting up, and
Speaker 1: while they were doing that, he came across a shady
Speaker 1: file folder named invoices from a pro publica investigation quote.
Speaker 1: Pratt found about a dozen bills that appeared to be
Speaker 1: from a Fort Worth nonprofit organization where his daughter and
Speaker 1: Williams took their son Jake for all treatment. As Pratt suspected,
Speaker 1: the invoices turned out to be fake. Williams had pretended
Speaker 1: to take Jake for therapy, then created the false bills
Speaker 1: so he could pocket a cash reimbursement from the county agency.
Speaker 1: So wow, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: I knew autism would find its way into one of
Speaker 2: these shares eventual course, because again it's one of those
Speaker 2: gray zones where all like, when people are unclear about
Speaker 2: what's going on, these grifters come in and fucking find
Speaker 2: a way to make money off of it.
Speaker 1: This is about when I'm teaching special ed and dealing
Speaker 1: with a lot of like how the healthcare system and
Speaker 1: whatnot was treating autism at that point in time, and
Speaker 1: it is like especially compared to now significantly more primitive
Speaker 1: period of time. So it makes sense to me that
Speaker 1: he would think, like, well, I can like fake some
Speaker 1: invoices for this and probably won't run into anybody who
Speaker 1: knows enough about what should be going on that they'll
Speaker 1: catch this, right, But they do right. In November two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, Williams pleads guilty and tearing County to
Speaker 1: felony theft. He's sentenced to eighteen months in jail, and
Speaker 1: he is released on bail as he appeals.
Speaker 2: He does wind up.
Speaker 1: Doing some time something like a year, I think, and
Speaker 1: life goes on, right. Amy eventually allows him to take
Speaker 1: partial custody of their children because his crime, while fucked up,
Speaker 1: had not involved the abuse of a child, just the
Speaker 1: abuse of the system itself. It is kind of on
Speaker 1: the edge of abuse of a child and spoiler, that's
Speaker 1: where this is heading. But she doesn't really have grounds
Speaker 1: to separate him from his kids at this stage, right,
Speaker 1: So he moves on to working as a personal trainer.
Speaker 1: He had been doing that for some That was part
Speaker 1: of why their marriage broke up. He'd been working as
Speaker 1: a personal trainer for a bit during that period, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't really able to bring in much money, and
Speaker 1: you know, so he starts doing that again. He continues
Speaker 1: trying to make a living that way, and he has
Speaker 1: a friend cod him a website, get Fit with Steve.
Speaker 1: This friend, Steve Causio, receives free physical training sessions in
Speaker 1: exchange for his work, and for a while things seem good.
Speaker 1: This changes a year or so later, as he and
Speaker 1: Amy's eleven year old son comes to school covered in
Speaker 1: facial bruises. His teachers obviously reported this, and an investigation
Speaker 1: revealed that Williams had hit their son in the face
Speaker 1: quote about twenty times. So that's real bad. Williams pleads
Speaker 1: guilty to a felony and he goes back to jail
Speaker 1: for two years, right.
Speaker 2: Just just like did he I mean you probably know
Speaker 2: the details of this, just fucking hitting his kid. He
Speaker 2: hits his kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sounds like I'm guessing the kid, you know, I
Speaker 1: think he's like not he's not neurotypical, So I'm guessing
Speaker 1: the kid was engaged in some sort of behavior that
Speaker 1: the doc did not know how to like, either just
Speaker 1: didn't like or didn't know how to deal with, and
Speaker 1: he just decided to punch.
Speaker 2: The kid a bunch fucking dance whole. Yeah. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he's he's the villain of the He's
Speaker 1: one of the villains of the episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what, I'm not one of these doctors
Speaker 2: that says like other people are in DOC like PhDs, etcetera.
Speaker 2: On doctor. But like when a guy like this like
Speaker 2: tries to use doctor like it's.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was saying, having the experiences I had
Speaker 1: in a grade school, I'm not surprised that a guy
Speaker 1: who's got a PhD in being a gym teachers, like
Speaker 1: his default reaction is just to hit a kid when
Speaker 1: they have a medical issue. Yeah, that absolutely scams. Texas
Speaker 1: gym teacher uses punches to treat some sort of neurological situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that's scance. This kid is different, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: punch him. So at this point Doc has crossed the
Speaker 1: line from con artist and scammer, which is a mixed
Speaker 1: bag from a moral standpoint, but not inherently evil. Plenty
Speaker 1: of lovable con artists out there to outright monster shit.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Amy spends the next like two years while he's in jail,
Speaker 1: focusing on her kids, trying to move on in life,
Speaker 1: trying to help them heal from what the fuck this
Speaker 1: guy has done to them, while William spends his time
Speaker 1: hind bars perfecting his next con. So he still has
Speaker 1: a friend on the outside, and it's Steve Cossio, the
Speaker 1: guy who had codd his website. Williams convinced him that
Speaker 1: the whole hitting his son in the face twenty times
Speaker 1: thing was overblown. He claimed he'd just been disciplining the
Speaker 1: boy normally, and he wrote in one email, I can
Speaker 1: honestly say that I am the only one in here
Speaker 1: for spanking their child in the face. In the face.
Speaker 1: Do you spank a child in the face?
Speaker 2: Number one? I'm not a big fan of spanking, but
Speaker 2: do you spank the face? Is that why you spank?
Speaker 2: Is the face? What a fucking asshole? Uh?
Speaker 1: His father in law, he wrote, was an evil, evil
Speaker 1: man who'd engineered the charges against him in some nefarious manner.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not sure if Casio himself is a huge
Speaker 1: piece of shit or just very gullible. My gut says,
Speaker 1: probably a little bit of column A, a little bit
Speaker 1: of column B. Probably more gollible than piece of shit,
Speaker 1: but probably not none piece of shit. So Williams and
Speaker 1: Casio work out a plan for him to make a
Speaker 1: bunch of cash quick when he gets out of jail,
Speaker 1: because he's calculated. William is calculated, I need thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars asap to get an attorney that can get me
Speaker 1: access to my kids again, right, which.
Speaker 2: So he can the last that gets the last? They
Speaker 2: want this? Yeah, what does he want? I mean? This
Speaker 2: is this is this kind of guy. Right?
Speaker 1: They think they have a right to their children, they
Speaker 1: possess them, they have a right to discipline them or whatever.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just as simple as he hates his ex
Speaker 1: wife and he wants to take them away from her.
Speaker 1: I don't know a couple of things. It could be
Speaker 1: none of them good. So there's no honest way for
Speaker 1: a kinnesesiology PhD to make thirty thousand dollars overnight, right,
Speaker 1: It's just not that kind of gig. But a medical
Speaker 1: practitioner taking advantage of the hysterically fucked up state of
Speaker 1: our healthcare industry absolutely can bill insurers for that kind
Speaker 1: of money in a very short period of time if
Speaker 1: they are diagnosing and treating a handful of patients. Thirty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars is not a lot of money in the
Speaker 1: world of billing health insurance, right, one person can rack
Speaker 1: that up in a night or two. A thos easy,
Speaker 1: you know. So while he's in inside, they sketch out
Speaker 1: a plan. When he gets out, he's going to go
Speaker 1: back to doing personal training, but he wouldn't work as
Speaker 1: a personal trainer. Instead, he'd recruit other trainers and have
Speaker 1: them train people, and he'd remove personal training from his website. Instead,
Speaker 1: he would use his legitimate status as a PhD to
Speaker 1: build himself as a doctor, and then he would diagnose
Speaker 1: patients and prescribe them physical training and build their insurance
Speaker 1: both for the diagnosis and for the PT sessions.
Speaker 2: Right now, our system is so stupid. Fucking system is
Speaker 2: so stupid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our system is stupid. This is also a crime, right,
Speaker 1: Like he's taking advantage of the system, but it's not
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to be able to do this, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Obviously there's a gray area in that sometimes, Like I said,
Speaker 1: like I've had a back injury and I got some
Speaker 1: physical therapy for it, right, Like, there's a great but
Speaker 1: like your average physical personal trainer, and that's a valid,
Speaker 1: you know, profession.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of skill that goes into that.
Speaker 1: But it's not a medical profession, right. It can it
Speaker 1: can help prevent certain medical problems, sure potentially, but like
Speaker 1: you're not but you see, they're not treating.
Speaker 2: You're not treating medical conditions. Yea, with with therapy, you're yeah,
Speaker 2: you're treating injury with therapy and you're strengthening. But there's
Speaker 2: a real thin line between that and saying we're going
Speaker 2: to use this physical therapy to treat your you know blank,
Speaker 2: whatever medical issue, your diabetes or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think what he's reliant upon is that
Speaker 1: both to the people who are going to make use
Speaker 1: of his services and to like the people who might
Speaker 1: casually scan this stuff the insurance company. You know, well,
Speaker 1: some people get prescribed like a physical therapist, he says,
Speaker 1: These guys are doing physical therapy. Maybe this is like fine, right,
Speaker 1: and it's there's so much stuff going on, maybe nobody
Speaker 1: will like notice anything, right, Yeah, they.
Speaker 2: Really count on that. They really count on the fact
Speaker 2: that this system is so byzantine and like complicated that
Speaker 2: like people will just sign off on things and like
Speaker 2: and maybe it's working. But it seems like in a
Speaker 2: lot of these cases you're telling me, it just they
Speaker 2: always get caught. Is it's like people think they're gonna
Speaker 2: get away with it because it's so complicated, but eventually
Speaker 2: someone's money is missing and they get mad about it.
Speaker 1: The problem is that it all it does work for
Speaker 1: a while, and you can make a lot of money
Speaker 1: off of it. One of the issues these guys have
Speaker 1: because of the kinds of people who are bold enough
Speaker 1: to try this in the first place. They're the kinds
Speaker 1: of people who get over confident, right, And also, you know,
Speaker 1: one thing to always know, when we talk about these
Speaker 1: guys who get caught for every one of them, who
Speaker 1: knows how many people there are who are smarter, right right,
Speaker 1: who stay below the line, you know. So, But that's
Speaker 1: his plan, right, clients are going to get free physical
Speaker 1: training sessions and he will get to build the work
Speaker 1: of his trainers is actual medical therapy. Right now, I
Speaker 1: know what a lot of people are saying, well, how
Speaker 1: is this guy?
Speaker 2: Is this?
Speaker 1: I mean, he's a bastard because he had his kid,
Speaker 1: But like this doesn't sound that bad, right, No one
Speaker 1: really cares if you just scam insurance and if clients
Speaker 1: are able to get free workout sessions, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that's overall good. We're going to build to the explanation
Speaker 1: of why that's not. But I want to assure you
Speaker 1: all what I have said, it is not fine. He
Speaker 1: is hurting people. He is in fact hurting you if
Speaker 1: you are a member of any of these like this
Speaker 1: is not a victimless crime, right, and it's not a
Speaker 1: crime where the only victim is some like faceless insurance company.
Speaker 1: He is actually hurting a lot of people by doing this,
Speaker 1: and we're going to explain why. I just want to
Speaker 1: state that so you're not asking the whole time, why
Speaker 1: do we care about people getting free physical personal training? Right? So,
Speaker 1: Doc Williams has Cozio removed the phrase personal training from
Speaker 1: his website and he starts claim. He claims to his
Speaker 1: friend in one of their jail emails, I don't know
Speaker 1: why he's allowed to do this from I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know whatever he says in one of their emails.
Speaker 1: Ninety five percent of my clients are paid for by insurance,
Speaker 1: which does not cover personal training. I have to build
Speaker 1: as therapeutic exercise. Steve's contention Cossio, the guy who's his webmasters, like, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't know any of this was illegal, and I
Speaker 1: don't trust him because of things like that, because that's
Speaker 1: a guy saying I'm committing a crime, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: But you know, I must note that the legality of
Speaker 1: anything that involves health insurance is convoluted enough that a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that seems like it should be a
Speaker 1: crime is legal, like Sophie and I are dealing with
Speaker 1: right now. So I could also get how a guy
Speaker 1: like Casio could just not really understand what's happening.
Speaker 2: It's so complicated, it seems like it's a wild West.
Speaker 2: It seems like anything can go I get it. I
Speaker 2: get how like people would try to get away with this? Yeah.
Speaker 1: On his website, this is how Doc Williams described his
Speaker 1: services to interest In clientele. During your initial consultation, Doctor
Speaker 1: Williams will perform a fitness appraisal to determine your current
Speaker 1: fitness level. This exam will help determine physiological strength and deficits.
Speaker 1: Doctor Williams will then work with you to set up
Speaker 1: an exercise program that will help you meet your goals
Speaker 1: and take you through the exercise program to make sure
Speaker 1: that you know how to do the exercises and are
Speaker 1: performing them safely. Many of doctor Dave's services are covered
Speaker 1: by medical insurance policies. In choir with Doctor Dave to
Speaker 1: see if you qualify Doctor Dave.
Speaker 2: Whenever the doctor goes by his first name, it's from
Speaker 2: the guy who goes by doctor Coff. Sometimes it's a
Speaker 2: it's a red flag. No.
Speaker 1: The only doctor that I will take advice from is
Speaker 1: doctor Bones. You know from which from the show from
Speaker 1: the show from Star Trek. Yes, Oh, I thought you
Speaker 1: meant Bones, the TV show. I don't know, I don't know. No, No,
Speaker 1: not knows much about generation sicknesses. No, that's that's Crusher
Speaker 1: and Pulaski in season two both find doctors Starfleet's best.
Speaker 1: Really one of them a hologram. Well, that's that's a Voyager, Yeah, Voyager. Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he shows up other places too. Speaking of
Speaker 1: Star Trek, Voyager, you know what else is? You know? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You during the earlyats, I don't know, here's ads, We're back,
Speaker 1: did you watch a lot of Voyager Taba?
Speaker 2: I watched a little of the Next Generation, and that
Speaker 2: was the only Star Trek I ever watched. I recognized
Speaker 2: inherently the difference in how Star Trek is probably intrinsically
Speaker 2: a better product than Star Wars. But I am so
Speaker 2: simple minded that I could only handle one fandom at
Speaker 2: a time. So I was a Star Wars guy, and
Speaker 2: I could only do the Next Generation, which I loved,
Speaker 2: by the way, that was fantastic. I think, you know, John, Look,
Speaker 2: McCarter is one of the best characters you know on
Speaker 2: film or TV. I love the guy, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: can't get into the other stuff, Like there was one
Speaker 2: with a black hole and yeah, I mean that was
Speaker 2: and there was a one where they went to San Francisco,
Speaker 2: I saw that one.
Speaker 1: And there was the one where they go back in time,
Speaker 1: the one with a whale. Ah, that was one of
Speaker 1: the Yeah, go into San Francisco. Yeah, they go. Well,
Speaker 1: there's one where they go back in time to save
Speaker 1: the whales. There's one in DS nine where they wind
Speaker 1: up and it's like twenty twenty four riots and stuff.
Speaker 1: And then there's one where they go back in time
Speaker 1: to the eighteen hundreds and Mark Twain is a major character.
Speaker 2: That one's a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I could see them in the hall room or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're danger room whatever they called it.
Speaker 1: Oh, no, they're in actual San Francisco in the eighteen
Speaker 1: eighties or whatever. No, they they meet real Mark Twain
Speaker 1: and he travels into the future and gets to go
Speaker 1: to space.
Speaker 2: Fucking actors love playing Mark Twain. They just love playing
Speaker 2: Mark Twain. Oh.
Speaker 1: The actor in those episodes playing Twain is just absolutely
Speaker 1: chewing the scenery.
Speaker 2: He's having a great fucking tea. They love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're back now. You can see how a
Speaker 1: lot of decent people could fall for this.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's great to be able to have a physical trainer,
Speaker 1: but expensive. You know, some guys like, Hey, your insurance
Speaker 1: will pay for it?
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 1: And you can even see how it would make sense
Speaker 1: to somebody, right, Obviously it's good to work out that
Speaker 1: can prevent certain health problems. Maybe my insurance is cool
Speaker 1: with this because they understand it's cheaper for them in
Speaker 1: the long run. Right, you can see how a smart
Speaker 1: person could talk themselves into thinking this is legit.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The only thing Williams was missing then to like make
Speaker 1: this plan a reality is the one thing that he
Speaker 1: jumped to getting as soon as he got out of jail,
Speaker 1: a national provider. Identify your number, right, And now it's
Speaker 1: time to talk about how you can scam an NPI number, right,
Speaker 1: because what Malachi and episode one and now what doctor
Speaker 1: Williams did is actually really fucking easy. NPIs are handed
Speaker 1: out by the federal government through Medicare. Both individual doctors
Speaker 1: and organizations like clinics have NPIs so they can build
Speaker 1: Medicare or a health insurer. And now I'm going to
Speaker 1: turn you back over that pro publica investigation and re quote.
Speaker 1: One would thinking an NPI, with its stamp of legitimacy
Speaker 1: would entail at least some basic vetting. But Williams discovered
Speaker 1: and exploited an astonishing loophole. Medicare doesn't check NPI applications
Speaker 1: for accuracy, a process that should take mere minutes or
Speaker 1: if automated, a millisecond, instead, as one federal prosecutor later
Speaker 1: noted in court, Medicare relies on the honesty of applicants.
Speaker 1: Records show Williams first applied for an NPI under his
Speaker 1: own name as far back as two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't until twenty fourteen that Williams began to
Speaker 1: ramp up his scheme. Even though now he wasn't just unlicensed,
Speaker 1: he was a two time felon. He got a second
Speaker 1: NPI under the company name Kinistesiology Specialists. The following year,
Speaker 1: he picked up another under Mansfield Therapy Associates. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: he obtained at least to Leffen Moore, often for entities
Speaker 1: he created in the areas where he found fitness clients Dallas, Nevada,
Speaker 1: North Texas, and Moore. By twenty seventeen, he had twenty NPISA,
Speaker 1: allowing him a new stream of billis.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's funny. I just googled how to
Speaker 2: get an NPI number and it's like you get like
Speaker 2: this like National Provider step by step guy, and you
Speaker 2: fill out this application. I don't know if it's changed,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't seem that hard. By the way, I'm
Speaker 2: going to do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't do this, but it's apparently quite easy. So
Speaker 1: this is an involved con. That's a lot of paperwork
Speaker 1: for a con, but it's not a hard one. In
Speaker 1: order to do this, Williams had to set up an
Speaker 1: ei in or employ your ID number for each NPI.
Speaker 1: Now this is all fraud. But he used his real name,
Speaker 1: his real address, the same set of real information for
Speaker 1: each application.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, and no one caught that.
Speaker 1: No one's looking Like it's not that like to say
Speaker 1: no one caught it would mean that like he snuck
Speaker 1: through like a dragnet of some sort, Like there's nothing.
Speaker 2: He just did it. Yeah, and nobody looked.
Speaker 1: So he described himself as a doctor, but listed that
Speaker 1: he had a PhD, claiming his specialty was in sports medicine. Now,
Speaker 1: the actual fraud that he had to do here is
Speaker 1: that he had to provide a fake medical license number. Right, So,
Speaker 1: like that is a thing that you think would be
Speaker 1: easy to check because you can't fake it easily. I've
Speaker 1: never heard of anyone faking a medical license number.
Speaker 2: That's like in the day.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you could, like if you're a hacker, maybe,
Speaker 1: but he didn't do that. He just gave them a
Speaker 1: fake number and nobody checked. This would not be hard
Speaker 1: to catch, right if there's like a database, here are
Speaker 1: all the medical license numbers. You check it against it
Speaker 1: it's not a real one, you know. I assume there's
Speaker 1: probably more to it than that, but they're not even
Speaker 1: doing that, right. So Williams began taking on clients and
Speaker 1: billing insurers like a son of a bitch, and soon
Speaker 1: he was raking in millions of dollars a year. He
Speaker 1: bought himself a McMansion in cash, several cars and motorcycles,
Speaker 1: and he set to work using some of his new
Speaker 1: founder riches trying to bribe his children's love. And that's
Speaker 1: where he made his first fatal error. He gave his
Speaker 1: kids iPad minis for Christmas twenty thirteen. Now, because the
Speaker 1: last time Amy had known anything about her former husband's
Speaker 1: finances before he went to jail again, he had been
Speaker 1: struggling to make ends meet as a personal trainer, so
Speaker 1: she was surprised to see he can suddenly afford several
Speaker 1: very expensive electronic toys, right, like a house and a house.
Speaker 1: I don't think maybe she doesn't know about the house,
Speaker 1: right she's not living with the guy. But she's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that's sketchy. That's her first sign that something's weird.
Speaker 1: And her second sign is like, a you know a
Speaker 1: lot of parents.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: This is a debatable thing, but like, she looks at
Speaker 1: her son's new iPad and she notices an app on
Speaker 1: it called I Message, which is you know, you know
Speaker 1: what I messages. I don't have to explain this, and
Speaker 1: it's it's got a bunch of new messages in it.
Speaker 1: And she's like, well, why would I, like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: teenage little teenage kid, I have a bunch of iye
Speaker 1: messages on this brand new iPad that seems kind of weird.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure how this happened, but I think
Speaker 1: Dad had activated these iPads and had like accidentally connected
Speaker 1: them to his shit all messages and it's specifically stored
Speaker 1: on this iPad is every communication he had with his
Speaker 1: friend Cozio to set up this fraudulent medical business.
Speaker 2: He hands it to his ex wife. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, she's the worst and he's so successful
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny, like it shows you how easy the
Speaker 1: npicon is, that like, this is not a dummy told. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's able to figure this shit out so amy.
Speaker 1: You know, she's not a big fan of her ex husband,
Speaker 1: what with the beating and stuff. Goes back to her dad, right,
Speaker 1: who also knows this guy's scammer, and her dad, having
Speaker 1: some kind of forensic accounting experiences, is able to look
Speaker 1: through this and it takes them a couple of hours
Speaker 1: to unravel the whole plot because it's all there in messages, right,
Speaker 1: and including messages from new clients where he is like
Speaker 1: going back and forth. She can see him like setting
Speaker 1: up to bill fraudulently. Like the whole case is here.
Speaker 1: If you hand this to like an FBI agent or whatever,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna like ten minutes to throw together a
Speaker 1: fucking indictment.
Speaker 2: You know, it would not take a lot of time.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh my god, here's the thing. His fraudulent business
Speaker 1: will keep going for like four years after this point. Now,
Speaker 1: how's that possible?
Speaker 2: Cave I'm assume, I'm assuming she said, she does she
Speaker 2: say something at this point or is she kind of
Speaker 2: keeping it under wraps.
Speaker 1: She absolutely does not keep it under wraps. She and
Speaker 1: her dad know this guy is dangerous and do not
Speaker 1: want him to be doing whatever the fuck con he's doing.
Speaker 1: So her dad, once he has again a complete, exceptional,
Speaker 1: very clear list of all the crimes this guy, all
Speaker 1: the fraud this guy is committing, calls Etna. Right, he
Speaker 1: gets him on the phone, He's like, should probably report this,
Speaker 1: and he tells EDNA, I want a report a fraud
Speaker 1: worth at this point, probably several hundred thousand dollars. And
Speaker 1: ETNA says, what's your member number? And he's like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't really have a number. I just and they're like, sorry,
Speaker 1: only members can report criminal activity.
Speaker 2: Hang on the fucking.
Speaker 1: Phone now, thankfully, Maybe not thankfully because Etna's dog shit.
Speaker 1: But his daughter is insured by ETNA. Right, what kind
Speaker 1: of rule is that the only members can report that
Speaker 1: we're being defrauded? Because it seems insane.
Speaker 2: What do you do with the FBI? Call?
Speaker 1: Sorry, you got to get an agent who's on our
Speaker 1: healthcare plan, find someone who's married to somebody with Etna.
Speaker 2: Right, that's the stupidest thing.
Speaker 1: It's so fucking stupid. They're clearly just trying to get
Speaker 1: him off the phone. So he gets his daughter because
Speaker 1: she's insured by etna's and he has her called to
Speaker 1: make the complaint.
Speaker 2: Oh we trust you, yeah, her, we trust she's one
Speaker 2: of us.
Speaker 1: They take the info from her at least, and then
Speaker 1: nothing happens ever one of theirs again. When all this
Speaker 1: blows up because this guy does get arrested, this becomes
Speaker 1: a big case and pro publicer reaches out to EDNA.
Speaker 1: It's like, why didn't you do anything about this fraud tip?
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, no one ever called us, never happened,
Speaker 1: no record of it.
Speaker 2: Liars lying, liars.
Speaker 1: Funny, So Pratt and Amy next he's like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know if Ventna's going anywhere, but he is defrauding
Speaker 1: all of the insurance companies. So let's call SIGNA next, right,
Speaker 1: And they provide the same information to SIGNA and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: one of your providers has no medical license, is saying
Speaker 1: he does. Was in prison twice for different felonies, one
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: Violence, multiple multiple identities.
Speaker 1: The least should be a doctor of anyone who shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been a doctor. Who ever pretended to be a doctor. Yes,
Speaker 1: So next he reaches out to So he does this,
Speaker 1: he makes a report there, nothing's going to happen. And
Speaker 1: he also reaches out to Southwest Airlines because Southwest they
Speaker 1: self fund their health care benefits and thus they pay
Speaker 1: directly for employee care. And Southwest is like, well, we
Speaker 1: we paid directly for but we run it through United Healthcare,
Speaker 1: which is this massive two hundred twenty six billion dollar company.
Speaker 1: They administer our benefits. So talk to them. So he
Speaker 1: calls you United Healthcare, and he talks to HR reps
Speaker 1: from both Southwest and from United Healthcare. And he first
Speaker 1: starts talking to someone from United in the fall of
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, and I'm going to quote again from Pro Publica,
Speaker 1: this is what happened. He spoke to a fraud investigator
Speaker 1: who took the information with interest, he said, but within
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks he was told she moved to
Speaker 1: a different position. Pratt continued calling United over the following
Speaker 1: two years, making about a dozen calls in total. He said,
Speaker 1: he is not a doctor. Pratt's told who ever picked
Speaker 1: up the phone, So I don't see how he can
Speaker 1: be filing claims. Frustrated, Pratt made one final call to
Speaker 1: United in twenty sixteen, but he was told the case
Speaker 1: was closed. United said he'd have to call the Texas
Speaker 1: Department of Insurance for any additional details. Pratt had already
Speaker 1: filed a complaint with the regulator, but reached out again.
Speaker 1: The department told him that because he hadn't personally been defrauded,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be able to act on his com point.
Speaker 2: Wow, what a maddening situation. One guy, one family's trying
Speaker 2: to do right, trying.
Speaker 1: To really hard to do the right thing.
Speaker 2: And the company is that they're trying to help ostensibly
Speaker 2: are wanting no part.
Speaker 1: Of it because at this point, but by the way,
Speaker 1: this this guy makes millions, he is defrauding them for
Speaker 1: what do a regular Again, it's nothing to these companies.
Speaker 1: I just said, United do It a twenty six billion
Speaker 1: dollar company. But this isn't pocket change, right, Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: It's so funny like they focus so much about small
Speaker 2: amounts of money to them. Yeah, in every other case,
Speaker 2: if you're trying.
Speaker 1: To get an inhaler that costs one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: bucks as opposed to one hundred and twenty dollars for example,
Speaker 1: They'll fight you to the ends of the earth.
Speaker 2: They will send you to prison if they have to. Yes,
Speaker 2: like in this company that this one guy who's making
Speaker 2: millions off of them, they don't do anything. But that is maddening. No,
Speaker 2: it's not maddening.
Speaker 1: So I bet you're all wondering at this point what
Speaker 1: the fuck right because you know it doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: because we expect these companies to be greedy and this
Speaker 1: guy's stealing from them, right, Like, why aren't they doing anything?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Well, you're not the only person wondering what the fuck
Speaker 1: is going on at this point. The good people at
Speaker 1: Pro Publica are wondering that too, and the journalists who
Speaker 1: reported on the Williams case, and again we'll conclude his case.
Speaker 1: He does eventually get arrested. But the journalists who reported
Speaker 1: on this several years ago was a guy named Marshall
Speaker 1: Allen Right published in late twenty nineteen, but he carries
Speaker 1: out a different investigation kind of inspired by he sees
Speaker 1: what's happening with Williams, and he's like, why the fuck
Speaker 1: do none of these companies want to do anything.
Speaker 2: To stop this?
Speaker 1: Why is it so easy to commit fraud and let
Speaker 1: have an insurance company, let you get away with it.
Speaker 1: And the conclusion of this further the second investigation he
Speaker 1: publishes is that insurance companies have no interest in stopping
Speaker 1: or even being aware of most of the fraud that
Speaker 1: happens on their networks.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They do not care and they do not want to
Speaker 1: be told about it. This may seem counterintuitive to you. Again,
Speaker 1: these are very greedy or famously greedy organizations, and medical
Speaker 1: fraud is estimated to make up at least ten percent
Speaker 1: of the one point two trillion dollars in health insurance
Speaker 1: spending this year. Right, that's not an insignificant amount of money.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't they want to stop that?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Well, Marshall reaches out to United as well as part
Speaker 1: of this later investigation, and here's what he writes. A
Speaker 1: United spokesperson said, I couldn't speak to a fraud investigator
Speaker 1: because we do not want to make that information public
Speaker 1: that would make it easier for those intent on engaging
Speaker 1: in fraud to commit these crimes.
Speaker 2: She said.
Speaker 1: The insurer uses analytics to flag potentially fraudulent billing and
Speaker 1: in some cases physically verifies that medical offices exist with
Speaker 1: that scant response. I plunged into the daunting thicket of
Speaker 1: agencies that are supposed to oversee the fight against health
Speaker 1: care fraud, each divided by region and responsibility. I contacted
Speaker 1: insurance regulators in every state and interviewed more than fifty
Speaker 1: other experts, including prosecutors, sames, analysts, and a dozen former
Speaker 1: investigators for the internal fraud units of private insurers. Far
Speaker 1: from being fierce guardians of your healthcare dollars, experts told me,
Speaker 1: the big name insurers who sell their own plans or
Speaker 1: are paid to manage employers, pick and choose their battles,
Speaker 1: and for a variety of reasons, fraud is not a
Speaker 1: top responsibility.
Speaker 2: You know what's weird is they'll cite fraud as one
Speaker 2: of the reasons that, like costs are so high, so like,
Speaker 2: you know, to not choose it as something to focus
Speaker 2: on is strange.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems strange. It's all gonna make sense,
Speaker 1: evil sense. And I do want to shout out again
Speaker 1: Marshall Allen, the pro public investigator. The article he wrote
Speaker 1: on Doc Williams is very good. The article he writes
Speaker 1: on why fraud doesn't get investigated, It's one of the
Speaker 1: best pieces of medical journalism i've ever read. It's a
Speaker 1: really really good article. Infuriating, but it's very good. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to look at the numbers here, kavem right,
Speaker 1: because that really helps tell the story of how little
Speaker 1: these companies care about fraud. So, California, obviously is the
Speaker 1: most populous state in the Union. There are about fourteen
Speaker 1: point four million Californians on private insurance, which is something
Speaker 1: like ten percent of the nation's total. So Mitchell asked
Speaker 1: a simple question, calling DA's offices in the counties that
Speaker 1: cut all of the Basicsly, he calls every DA's office
Speaker 1: in California for the counties that cover about eighty percent
Speaker 1: of the state's population, which is a representative sample, we
Speaker 1: can say, right, and he asks eats of these das,
Speaker 1: how often did fraud cases referred by commercial insurers lead
Speaker 1: to criminal charges in twenty seventeen and eighteen.
Speaker 2: You have a guess because of this, I'm gonna say, like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, twenty percent.
Speaker 1: The number is twenty two, twenty two total times.
Speaker 2: I won't say that because I knew where we were
Speaker 2: heading with this. Yeah, I wouldn't before this thought much higher.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, obviously something is fucked up here right. Last episode,
Speaker 1: we discussed a story of nightmarish medicaid fraud. About thirteen
Speaker 1: million Californians are on Medicaid. During the same period of
Speaker 1: time twenty seventeen to twenty eighteen, the state fraud unit
Speaker 1: filed criminal charges against three hundred and twenty one people
Speaker 1: for defrauding Medicaid and recovered nearly one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: So three hundred and twenty one people are charged for
Speaker 1: medical fraud through Medicaid. About the same number of people
Speaker 1: are under private insurance, and the number of people charged
Speaker 1: is twenty two.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: That gives you an idea of how not on the
Speaker 1: ball the private insurance companies are right. There is no
Speaker 1: reason to believe medicaid fraud is less common than corporate
Speaker 1: insurance fraud or more common either. They seem to be
Speaker 1: probably pretty similar levels. Mitchell looks at other states and
Speaker 1: he finds similar discrepancies. In Minnesota, private insurers preferred two
Speaker 1: cases of fraud de regulators in twenty seventeen and five
Speaker 1: and twenty eighteen. Meanwhile, state medicaid fraud investigators carried out
Speaker 1: six hundred investigations and got one hundred and thirty four
Speaker 1: indictments in Georgia. Only three of the top ten insurers
Speaker 1: reported any fraud at all in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're better there, They're so good.
Speaker 1: Everyone's very honest in charging good. It's all the peaches.
Speaker 1: So what the fuck is going on? Well, investigations cost money,
Speaker 1: and soda is pursuing court cases. From the insurance company's perspective,
Speaker 1: that's all wasted money because the money that they're being
Speaker 1: defrauded for, they're not actually out because they could just
Speaker 1: increase your rates and copays to make more money. So
Speaker 1: that makes more sense than investigating and stopping fraud. Will
Speaker 1: just charge our customers more. They have to pay. They
Speaker 1: don't have a choice. This isn't something where they can
Speaker 1: shop around. We'll just fuck them more and then we
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about stopping fraud.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, Holy shit, doesn't that make you? It a
Speaker 2: burned down a building, and this is I'm sure this
Speaker 2: is only one percent of why insurance companies are awful.
Speaker 2: Will we look at the whole thing, not the main reason.
Speaker 2: But this is so bad infuriating.
Speaker 1: Yes, So that's what I meant when I said, like
Speaker 1: there's a real harm to what Doc Williams is doing
Speaker 1: because when he brags that these these physical training sessions
Speaker 1: are free to the consumer, that's not really true. Everybody
Speaker 1: in the state is paying more because it is going
Speaker 1: to raise their rates to compensate for this kind of shit.
Speaker 2: It's honest. Yeah, not a victimless crime because not the
Speaker 2: insurance companies will find a way to make their money.
Speaker 2: No way they're going to miss it.
Speaker 1: There are, in fact, some victimless crimes out there, but
Speaker 1: defrauding insurance is not one of them. Being a fake
Speaker 1: doctor is a victim full crime right now. It is
Speaker 1: very fucked up, and well Williams is a bastard for
Speaker 1: a number of reasons. I hope I've made it clear
Speaker 1: that the insurers are the real bastards. Here in the
Speaker 1: state of Washington. The Office of the Insurance Commissioner, who
Speaker 1: investigates these things, got only one report of fraud in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen from Primira blue Cross US, a major insurer
Speaker 1: from Era, told Mitchell the Pro public A guy when
Speaker 1: he investigated that they don't report fraud unless there's criminal intent,
Speaker 1: which is weird because it's fraud.
Speaker 2: They say it's criminal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they say, they try to educate perpetrators instead. So
Speaker 1: we do have the enlightened Star Trek future justice system
Speaker 1: somewhere in this country. It's only an health insurance. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, isn't that nice?
Speaker 2: Oh my god. They're trying to reform.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get it, that's yeah, And they will try.
Speaker 1: One thing they'll try to do is put people on
Speaker 1: repayment plans. And this there's a degree of since this
Speaker 1: makes if it's a case where you've got a real
Speaker 1: doctor who just tries to get over something and he
Speaker 1: scams him in of a couple of grand because he's
Speaker 1: in a tight spot. Instead of trying to go after
Speaker 1: that guy criminally, they'll, you know, just try to have
Speaker 1: him repay what he took, right, which in that case
Speaker 1: makes a degree of sense. But there's two things happening here.
Speaker 1: One is that they don't report this at all to
Speaker 1: the government, so the government cannot see none of these
Speaker 1: regulators enforcement cannot see are there broader patterns of fraud
Speaker 1: that are maybe evidence of organized crime. And number two,
Speaker 1: they don't really discriminate between him. Maybe this doctor who's
Speaker 1: a real doctor slipped up once and did a bad
Speaker 1: thing versus this guy's not a doctor at all, because
Speaker 1: they just don't actually care the.
Speaker 2: Fact that these dummies got away with it for so
Speaker 2: long and were finally stopped at some point, probably because
Speaker 2: of the relentless nature of his father in law. Is
Speaker 2: ex father in law just goes to prove how much
Speaker 2: more is probably being done by smart people.
Speaker 1: Oh god, by smart huge crime, smart people who like
Speaker 1: don't wind up pissing off like this her father or
Speaker 1: her dad sounds like he's fucking cool and the track
Speaker 1: record on the an iPad and leaving a huge track record.
Speaker 1: But you know who never records their crimes on an
Speaker 1: iPad that they didn't give to the children that they hit.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: The people who I said they don't do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're too smart. They're too smart for it because
Speaker 2: they're smart and inherently good.
Speaker 1: And they're inherently moral actors, just like everyone who is
Speaker 1: legally or medically involved with this podcast. Anyway, Ah, we're back.
Speaker 1: So I just was talking about Washington. How like Premire's
Speaker 1: justification for not reporting frauds, We only do it if
Speaker 1: there's criminal intent. We try to educate perpetrators, you get
Speaker 1: him to repay. And this is what's going to happen
Speaker 1: to Doc Williams right when he finally gets caught for
Speaker 1: the first time. It has nothing to do with his
Speaker 1: ex wife and her father and alth the documented fraud
Speaker 1: on that iPad, But instead a client of his personal
Speaker 1: training service, a Southwest flight attendant named Nannette Bishop. Bishop,
Speaker 1: got referred to Doc by a coworker, and she, you know,
Speaker 1: does a couple of sessions, but she stops working out
Speaker 1: with them, right, Maybe they don't click, or maybe she just,
Speaker 1: you know, she gets too busy. She's, you know, a
Speaker 1: flight attendant, busy job, right, So she goes a couple
Speaker 1: of times and then stops. And then one day she's
Speaker 1: checking her insurance records and again it's just a crapshoot
Speaker 1: that like somebody checked on that, because I don't know
Speaker 1: that I've ever looked into mind, right, And she sees
Speaker 1: that Williams has continued billing her company for dozens of sessions,
Speaker 1: even during periods where she had been out of the country,
Speaker 1: like working. So she reaches out to Williams. First, I
Speaker 1: think her assumption is like, there's maybe there's got to
Speaker 1: be some fuck up, maybe his computer fucked up, right,
Speaker 1: and it just kept auto billing or something, and she's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know I didn't do these sessions. You should probably
Speaker 1: return this money to my insurer so they don't raise
Speaker 1: my rates. And you know, when he doesn't do anything,
Speaker 1: she eventually reports it to her insurer and Signa sends
Speaker 1: Williams a letter saying, hey, we just realized you're not
Speaker 1: a doctor and you have built us for one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Please get it back. I would love to see that letter.
Speaker 2: I would love to see his response to that letter too.
Speaker 1: Contra to what insurres like Primara like to claim, there's
Speaker 1: no way this could have been anything but criminal fraud.
Speaker 1: There's not a chance that this is in good faith
Speaker 1: because he doesn't have a medical license. You can't lie
Speaker 1: about having a medical license and bill for almost two
Speaker 1: hundred grand and care. So that's committing a felony, right,
Speaker 1: that's felonies.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, but Signa just sends Williams a bill, so we
Speaker 1: starts making payments. But he also switches over to a
Speaker 1: fresh NPI number under the same name and keeps billing
Speaker 1: Signa and paying. Yes, yes, my god, they give him
Speaker 1: more than one hundred thousand dollars. A year later, he
Speaker 1: owes them three hundred and ten grand.
Speaker 2: Right. He's like, sure, I'll pay it, but I'm out
Speaker 2: them by changing this. I'm gonna have her paid for
Speaker 2: her own thing. It's fantastic, my god, uh huh so funny.
Speaker 1: So stories like this are far from unheard of. Pro
Speaker 1: Publica spoke to a former fraud prosecutor, a guy named Elliott,
Speaker 1: who claims that a big part of the problem is
Speaker 1: that private insurers don't just ignore fraud, they fight the
Speaker 1: govern when the Feds try to investigate it.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: When private insurers pitched the occasional case, Elliott said, prosecutors
Speaker 1: had to weigh whether the insurer would fully cooperate with
Speaker 1: the investigation. Federal prosecutors dig into the details when they
Speaker 1: get referrals, he said, they might want to broaden a case,
Speaker 1: which would create more work for the insurer or sully
Speaker 1: its reputation, or prosecutors might find out the insurer was
Speaker 1: not doing its job certain things they wanted you to
Speaker 1: know about, and certain things they didn't want you to
Speaker 1: know about, he said. The private insurers, Elliott said, seem
Speaker 1: to prefer to close cases quietly, cutting off the fraudster
Speaker 1: and pursuing repayment, But he said that allows the scammer
Speaker 1: to go on cheating others. That's not fraud enforcement, he said,
Speaker 1: it's an accounting mechanism. Again, we don't give a shit
Speaker 1: who else this person hurts. If they're prescribing, if we
Speaker 1: don't care if they're faking, if they're like tricking people
Speaker 1: into thinking they have Alzheimer's, those people kill themselves. As
Speaker 1: long as we cut.
Speaker 2: Them off from billing us, we're good.
Speaker 1: You know, they've done the math. The math works out
Speaker 1: for them. Care ship just this. Yeah, so it's.
Speaker 2: The worst people are in charge of the most important ship.
Speaker 1: And absolutely this should be like a central concern of
Speaker 1: our entire society. And instead we're like, who's the biggest psychopaths?
Speaker 1: Who's someone who's like just on this edge of like
Speaker 1: skinning animals for fun, Like, let's put them in charge
Speaker 1: of it, right?
Speaker 2: Are they good numbers? Put them? That's what we were Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And honestly, I think skinning animals for fun is
Speaker 1: probably like less harmful than this. Yeah, let's less damage
Speaker 1: than what these people are doing. There's more of a
Speaker 1: sickness at play here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't recommend doing that either. By the way,
Speaker 2: people were not.
Speaker 1: Like saying skin don't skin animal, but maybe skin health
Speaker 1: insurance executives for fun A couples around that. See what happens, Yes,
Speaker 1: see what happens. Yeah, that could be we could we
Speaker 1: could rehabilitate the skinning animals for fun people by sticking
Speaker 1: them on health insurance executives. I want like one of
Speaker 1: those like Iraq War deck of cards, and it's just
Speaker 1: the c suites for all of the fucking big insurance.
Speaker 1: So obviously there's a tremendous degree of societal harm here.
Speaker 1: By holding off on reporting this stuff and actively obvius
Speaker 1: skating investigations, private insurers make it harder for regulators to
Speaker 1: spot patterns and effectively identify scams or bust people who
Speaker 1: are conning Americans. Right, Remember, Williams is just scanning money
Speaker 1: for PT, so the harm he's doing to people here
Speaker 1: is less than like what the Jenkinses are doing. But like,
Speaker 1: there's other people doing what the jenkins is are doing,
Speaker 1: and they're allowed to hide for years and harm people
Speaker 1: because insurers are helping them hide. The most difficult cases
Speaker 1: to catch are the folks who carefully figure out the
Speaker 1: threshold of money under which an insurer will ignore them
Speaker 1: and avoid billing to Egregiously, Williams got caught because he
Speaker 1: was sloppy. He was billing people who had stopped going
Speaker 1: to him.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Lie it about having a medical license.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But if he'd had a real MD and still have
Speaker 1: been doing this fraud, and if he hadn't been quite
Speaker 1: so dumb about it, he probably could have kept doing
Speaker 1: it forever. Likewise, if both Jenkins's rather than just the
Speaker 1: husband had been MD's, she might have gotten away with it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's not a zero percent chance. You know.
Speaker 1: There are other calculations at play here too. Per that
Speaker 1: second Pro Publica investigation quote, other investigators say targeting suspect
Speaker 1: medical providers and facilities puts the insurers in the dilemma.
Speaker 1: They need a certain number of doctors and hospitals and
Speaker 1: their networks to make plans attractive to employers. They also
Speaker 1: must ensure patients have access to the care they need.
Speaker 1: So apparently I learned there's a calculation that goes on if,
Speaker 1: for instance, you're the only neurologist in town, your fraud
Speaker 1: may be forgiven.
Speaker 2: Wow, great, oh my god, oh my, that is amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's mean. I mean there's jobs, security and medicine, folks.
Speaker 2: For any young people out there considering lifestyle and considering
Speaker 2: what they'll do with their lives. I mean, it goes approve.
Speaker 2: You can make a good money being a doctor, and
Speaker 2: if you're really sort of a go getter, you can
Speaker 2: defraud health insurance for millions of dollars. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you want to do a little
Speaker 1: bit of defrauding health insurance and a little bit of
Speaker 1: writing me prescriptions for delatted, who's to know, you know,
Speaker 1: it could be between between the two of us.
Speaker 2: I'm not getting my.
Speaker 1: Medical listeners. Yeah, Cave won't do it, but one of
Speaker 1: you will hit us up on the subreddit if you'll
Speaker 1: prescribe me to lauded. That's a joke legally speaking. So
Speaker 1: Williams keeps getting in trouble with insurers right at the
Speaker 1: next Finally, and then United Healthcare, and this is where
Speaker 1: the story gets baffling. United it sent more than six
Speaker 1: hundred house and dollars in payments to Williams over the years,
Speaker 1: and then they realize he doesn't have a medical license,
Speaker 1: they demand he pay them back, which makes a degree
Speaker 1: of sense. But this demand includes an offer. They're like,
Speaker 1: if you don't reply, we will pay ourselves back out
Speaker 1: of future billings that you file. In other words, we
Speaker 1: know you're not a we know you're not a doctor.
Speaker 1: You know who you are a doctor, but if you
Speaker 1: keep pretending to be one, we'll take it out of
Speaker 1: your future billing.
Speaker 2: My god, you know us.
Speaker 1: You just absolutely you can't even parody the evil here.
Speaker 1: So this even is rather academic because again he just
Speaker 1: keeps switching in pis. He's got a bunch of them right,
Speaker 1: whenever he gets caught, he's like the borg.
Speaker 2: Right, you shoot him.
Speaker 1: Once and they get hit, and then you shoot him again,
Speaker 1: and there's shields of remodulated.
Speaker 2: That's what he's doing. All of every thought.
Speaker 1: I have is filtered through the lens of Star Trek,
Speaker 1: the next generation Kava.
Speaker 2: That's just the way it is. That's cool, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Quote in all, United paid Williams more than three point
Speaker 1: two million dollars, most of it after the insurer had
Speaker 1: caught him in the act, but in reality the losses
Speaker 1: weren't all Uniteds. Most of the fraud was funded by
Speaker 1: its clients Southwest. It's just not worth it to them.
Speaker 1: Said doctor Eric bricker An in turn, is who spent
Speaker 1: years running a company that advised employers who self funded
Speaker 1: their insurance, and perhaps Kenner. Intuitively, insurance companies are loath
Speaker 1: to offend physicians and hospitals, and they're all important networks,
Speaker 1: even those accused of wrongdoing. Many experts have said, so,
Speaker 1: the reasons for this are complicated, and it's more than
Speaker 1: purely bastardy on behalf of insurers, but that is at
Speaker 1: the center of it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Doctor Williams is eventually fully caught, not by an insurer
Speaker 1: but by the FBI, in part because of the tireless
Speaker 1: reporting of his ex wife and her father, all of
Speaker 1: these different insurers who keep catching him and like this
Speaker 1: keep they don't give up, and eventually, somewhat at the
Speaker 1: FBI puts two and two together and it's like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: freak conviction.
Speaker 2: They've got everything on the iPad. Great. I wonder if
Speaker 2: at this point he was still just doing it because
Speaker 2: he felt like he was sort of stuck and he
Speaker 2: had to pay the insurance companies and he was like
Speaker 2: he felt like he had to just keep doing it,
Speaker 2: or if he thought he was really gonna get away
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 1: He's just kind of dumb because like a smart guy,
Speaker 1: you got four million dollars at that age you're kind
Speaker 1: of middle aged. You move to Ecuador somewhere that doesn't
Speaker 1: extra out. You can live off that. You know, that
Speaker 1: didn't go into prison. But like the Dwarves of Moria,
Speaker 1: he delved too deeply and too greedily. The star Trek
Speaker 1: are we talking, No, that's a Lord of the Rings reference.
Speaker 2: I'm a specific type of nerd, Robert, I'm a very
Speaker 2: specific type of nerd.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, So he gets sentenced. He goes to prison
Speaker 1: for a while, more than nine years, so good, he
Speaker 1: gets punished. None of the guys at any of the
Speaker 1: insurance cups get punished.
Speaker 2: But he does.
Speaker 1: And uh that's good now, Covet. This whole story is
Speaker 1: a real bummer to contemplate, right, kind of sad, kind
Speaker 1: of depressing. So I want to end the story of
Speaker 1: one more fake doctor. This does not really tie into
Speaker 1: the NPI stuff, but maybe it'll leave everybody in a
Speaker 1: better mood because it's kind of like a good story
Speaker 1: of a fake doctor.
Speaker 2: It's a redemption arc. I'm listening doctor. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So his name is Adam Litwin and he is now
Speaker 1: a real MD too, But as a boy, Adam grew
Speaker 1: up in all of his grandfather, a pediatrist, and he
Speaker 1: wanted desperately to be a doctor himself. As a teenager,
Speaker 1: he would wear a beeper and pretend to be getting
Speaker 1: texts from patience, which was maybe a warning sign weird.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, weird. Yeah, that is weird. Should not become
Speaker 2: a doctor. That is a red flag if I've ever
Speaker 2: heard one. You don't. Nobody wants to have a pager.
Speaker 2: They're the worst thing. It's an electronic leash that gets
Speaker 2: hugged around your neck. In love with the worst thing
Speaker 2: about being a doctor. Oh my god, oh god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like joining the army and being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: finally I'm in the army. I'm going to get to
Speaker 1: file paperwork.
Speaker 2: God, I get to run through luod Yes. Well no,
Speaker 2: then people do like yeah that.
Speaker 1: So after high school he goes to San Jose State
Speaker 1: and then he transfers to Saint Louis to get into
Speaker 1: the pre med program, which included clinical rotations, and he
Speaker 1: does some actual clinical rotations, and he describes this as
Speaker 1: the happiest moment of his life. Right he is he
Speaker 1: feels like this is exactly where I meant to be.
Speaker 1: It's what I want to do. And then that portion
Speaker 1: of schooling ends and he gets depressed. Right the way
Speaker 1: he describes it, he just wanted to I think there
Speaker 1: may be a little bit of mental illness going on here.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be a doctor so bad that he
Speaker 1: couldn't focus on actually finishing school to become one.
Speaker 2: It's weird.
Speaker 1: His actions don't make a lot of if if he's
Speaker 1: purely acting logically, I don't know why you wouldn't go
Speaker 1: through medical school.
Speaker 2: But he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He just drops out and he moves to California, and
Speaker 1: he starts spending all of us time in the UCLA
Speaker 1: Medical Library reading medical textbooks. Here's how the La Times
Speaker 1: describes what happens next. At some point, someone mistook him
Speaker 1: for a resident, and he didn't correct them, he said, instead,
Speaker 1: he made up a backstory that he began to widely share.
Speaker 1: He was a surgery resident who had recently transferred from
Speaker 1: a nearby hospital. Litwin was twenty six, about the same
Speaker 1: age as most doctors in training. For months he fooled them.
Speaker 1: He ate lunch in the cafeteria at UCLA Medical Center
Speaker 1: and he watched doctors perform complicated surgeries allowed because senior
Speaker 1: doctors thought he was a physician. Litwyn claims now that
Speaker 1: he never treated anyone doing this and he was never
Speaker 1: caught treating a patient.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 1: I've run into a couple of cases. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things where like Malachi makes the same claim. I
Speaker 1: wonder if the hospitals are kind of just protecting their
Speaker 1: asses and they don't really want anyone to know I have.
Speaker 1: I didn't include them because we're talking about the US here,
Speaker 1: but I ran into some fake doctors who scammed the
Speaker 1: NA over in the UK, who noted that like a
Speaker 1: really good way to be a fake doctor is to
Speaker 1: be part of like a team of doctors consulting on
Speaker 1: it case because you don't actually have to get in
Speaker 1: there and physically do anything. You can just kind of
Speaker 1: like provide like talk, right, and that that's easy to get,
Speaker 1: easier to get away with, right, And that does kind
Speaker 1: of make sense to me that like maybe that's all
Speaker 1: he was doing, whether or not when actually treated anyone.
Speaker 1: He did other stuff. He used the doctor's parking lot
Speaker 1: with a borrowed pass, He stole a key to get
Speaker 1: into the residence lounge. He slept in the on call rooms,
Speaker 1: and he seems to have really loved all this stuff around,
Speaker 1: actually practicing medicine along with the medicine.
Speaker 2: Which is like davish. He's like, I love the cafeteria food,
Speaker 2: I love sleeping in the shitty call rooms.
Speaker 1: It's like someone being like, God, one day, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be a professional podcaster and I'll finally get to
Speaker 1: put an SD card into an SD slot, the dream
Speaker 1: that I've had in my whole life transferring files from
Speaker 1: one machine to the other.
Speaker 2: So weird, So weird. Man doctor, Yeah, doing rounds and helping.
Speaker 1: Patients is awesome to sleep at work sometimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the part that we like live with because
Speaker 2: of all the other stuff that we do. You know,
Speaker 2: we don't very strange. You don't go into it for that.
Speaker 2: The page the.
Speaker 1: Patriot thing is so unhinged. So eventually he gets caught.
Speaker 1: What claims it takes nine months, prosecutors say six. Either way,
Speaker 1: he gets away with us for a while, and because
Speaker 1: he does know a lot right, he's legitimately well educated.
Speaker 1: He's read and re read tons of medical textbooks, so
Speaker 1: he's able to fake. And he's like the right age too,
Speaker 1: So you can't just look at him and be like, well,
Speaker 1: that's obviously a small child in a costume. His downfall
Speaker 1: comes when a pharmacist realizes that he's forged prescriptions for
Speaker 1: cough medicine and tranquilizers using the name of a real
Speaker 1: doctor who shared his last name. Litwin claims the prescriptions
Speaker 1: were for a friend, which, sure, buddy, all of our
Speaker 1: illegal drugs are for a friend. What a dumb mistakes
Speaker 1: A dumb mistake.
Speaker 2: If he had written, like you know, with toopralol or
Speaker 2: some some blood pressure medicine or some like diabetes medicine,
Speaker 2: probably he gab a penton script or some shit well
Speaker 2: like fucking going for anything that's controlled. What a stupid mistake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a dumb mistake. They catch him, and
Speaker 1: at age twenty eight, he pled guilty to three misdemeanors
Speaker 1: forging a prescription, chief among them. He was sentenced to
Speaker 1: six months of counseling and two months in jail, which
Speaker 1: he served. And normally this would either be the start
Speaker 1: of an arc of a bunch of other cons or
Speaker 1: maybe he would sheepishly go back to regular life, but
Speaker 1: that's actually not what he does. He stays in therapy
Speaker 1: after the six months of counseling that he was mandated
Speaker 1: to do, and like keeps working on himself. He moves
Speaker 1: back home. He said in interviews that like he realized
Speaker 1: afterwards that he had narcissistic tendencies, which is probably part
Speaker 1: of why he didn't actually go through with medical school.
Speaker 1: While he felt like he could fake it, and he
Speaker 1: like ex about himself and works on it. He gets
Speaker 1: into business with his grandfather who is a doctor, and
Speaker 1: he's running the books for their health care company. But
Speaker 1: he doesn't do anything about Like, he's not treating patients.
Speaker 1: He's just handling like finance and stuff. Occasionally he would
Speaker 1: keep lying about being a doctor. In his personal life,
Speaker 1: he like lies to his first wife about being I
Speaker 1: think a chi cardiologist, and she divorces him. Right, but
Speaker 1: you get that far.
Speaker 2: How do you marry him and not know he's got
Speaker 2: to be good? I mean, I assume he's.
Speaker 1: Probably good at it, right, He's probably so, but you know,
Speaker 1: he apparently like comes to terms with the fact that
Speaker 1: that was fucked up. And two years after the divorce
Speaker 1: and now middle aged, Litwin enrolls himself in the Saint
Speaker 1: James School of medicine.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Saint James is a for profit medical school. It is
Speaker 1: very expensive, but nowhere else is going to take him, right,
Speaker 1: I think it's in the Caribbean. It is a from
Speaker 1: what I can tell, it's a real medical school. They
Speaker 1: do teach you to be at their degrees or recognized,
Speaker 1: but it's the kind of place where like, if you
Speaker 1: can't get in anywhere else, all they care about is
Speaker 1: that you have money, right, And that's for him, that's
Speaker 1: the only option, right.
Speaker 2: He's not going to get into a regular medical school.
Speaker 1: And I looked at some like I found like a
Speaker 1: doctor in Quorra who was like, yeah, it's like an
Speaker 1: okay school, but the only reason you'd go there is
Speaker 1: if you can't get in anywhere else. And it makes
Speaker 1: sense to me, like, yeah, where else is it when
Speaker 1: gonna go?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: But he goes to medical school and he graduates, right,
Speaker 1: he has an MD. He now lives in Chicago. He
Speaker 1: does medical school, he does his rotations at least in Chicago,
Speaker 1: but he can't finish right, And as far as I know,
Speaker 1: I don't think he has finished it because he can't
Speaker 1: do his residency. Because to do a residency you have
Speaker 1: to get accepted somewhere as a resident and anyone one
Speaker 1: of the things. When he goes to Chicago to do
Speaker 1: his medical school rotations, there's like this whatever board handles that.
Speaker 1: There's this big debate about it, and what they decide
Speaker 1: is like, well, let him do his rotations, but we're
Speaker 1: going to put a note on his record about what
Speaker 1: he did in the past so that anyone who is
Speaker 1: going to take him knows it. And at this point,
Speaker 1: I think the last story I ran into him was
Speaker 1: in like twenty twenty one, a couple of years after graduation,
Speaker 1: he still had not gotten his residency. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he's gotten it yet. I don't know if he
Speaker 1: ever will, but like it is at least a story
Speaker 1: of growth. This is the one fake doctor who did
Speaker 1: He did get an MD, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like there's some legitimate like he must
Speaker 2: have had some legitimate issue that prevented him from finishing.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it was, you know, Yeah, No,
Speaker 2: but yeah, that is Actually it does seem like he's
Speaker 2: trying to do the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's trying to do the right thing, yeah,
Speaker 1: in his own way. Yeah, it's what I can't blame
Speaker 1: any hospital for being like, no, we're not going to
Speaker 1: take this guy as a resident. But I just because
Speaker 1: of my belief in like the fact that people can
Speaker 1: be better and like be redeemed, I do hope he
Speaker 1: gets a chance.
Speaker 2: Like that's interesting. Yeah, I'm curious to know where he
Speaker 2: is now. I'm fascinated, Like, yeah, if he is, just
Speaker 2: like he's like some small town somewhere.
Speaker 1: For it, there's certainly not enough doctors. So my hope
Speaker 1: is that like he figures it out and is able
Speaker 1: to like help people.
Speaker 2: The thing is, you need to do a residency. I
Speaker 2: mean medical school you learn a lot, but you don't
Speaker 2: learn really how to take care of patience until you do,
Speaker 2: like your residency. That's when you're like really in charge
Speaker 2: of it. So I I mean, I'd really fascinated to
Speaker 2: see how he does that. I mean, he's better than
Speaker 2: the Malachi kid. The Malachi kid, like you can't expect
Speaker 2: him to have like on his white coat like FBI
Speaker 2: Female Body Inspector or something like that on it. Like
Speaker 2: that guy was a creep. This guy, at least I
Speaker 2: get the sense that his intentions are are good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and he wants to be a doctor, which I can
Speaker 2: always respect.
Speaker 1: It seems like he's also like accepted his mistakes and
Speaker 1: like why he made them, Like, oh, that was like narcissism,
Speaker 1: That's why I did that. That's not a reasonable or
Speaker 1: an okay thing to do. So yeah, I hope, I
Speaker 1: hope things go well with that. It's at least a
Speaker 1: nice story to end on, Like it's a story of
Speaker 1: somebody who's shown some capacity for growth and change, as
Speaker 1: opposed to the health insurance industry, which only has the
Speaker 1: capacity to grow in the same sense that a tumor grows.
Speaker 2: Some listener out there is like, my doctor's name is
Speaker 2: Adam Littwin Mine.
Speaker 1: Yeah maybe, ah cave, how you doing?
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. It's like every
Speaker 2: time I get the coming show, I feel like I'm
Speaker 2: like a listener who won a contest, and it's very
Speaker 2: nice to be here. It's very nice to talk to you.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad that the field that I've dedicated my
Speaker 2: whole life to and lost my twenties and thirties to
Speaker 2: can provide you so much horrible, horrible content.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, No, we have feasted off of the
Speaker 1: off of the wealth of bastardrey that surrounds this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's like anything that is absolutely crucial to
Speaker 1: survival and also complicated and hard to understand will be
Speaker 1: targeted by real pieces of shit. Ye, it's the same
Speaker 1: reason why there's all sorts of like scams and unethical
Speaker 1: shit with like the big ag and all like the
Speaker 1: way subsidies and shit work. Right, everybody needs food, most
Speaker 1: people don't understand how to make it. Yeah, right, great
Speaker 1: place for a con artists to live that void.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's the one thing that's the
Speaker 2: most important thing that we're terrible at. And yeah, and
Speaker 2: it's in so many ways, on so many levels.
Speaker 1: But thank you for continuing to be the good part
Speaker 1: of that thing, and thank you listeners for continuing to
Speaker 1: be good people. And again, well, well we'll put a
Speaker 1: po box. We'll plug that in after the episode. If
Speaker 1: you do get a delauded script and you just want
Speaker 1: to help out your boy, what Sophie, Sophie, it's not
Speaker 1: illegal to receive delauded in the mail, I assume bo.
Speaker 2: Wait, yeah, we should check that.
Speaker 1: We should probably check that.
Speaker 2: Don't send Robert things. Listen to my podcast instead, the
Speaker 2: House of pod do that.
Speaker 1: Do that?
Speaker 2: Don't send. Don't send fentanyl or drugs via the mail.
Speaker 2: If you are not a large hospital, prescribing pharmacy, or
Speaker 2: anything along those lines. Listen to my podcast The House
Speaker 2: of Pod instead. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of our listeners is the hospital from the show House,
Speaker 1: so I hope they take that to heart. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: forget the name of that Robert. This podcast is so
Speaker 1: over yeah, just like House.
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 2: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.