Doctor Billions | 6. Whack a Mole

Dozens of indictments, years of cumulative jail time, millions and millions in fines. But what do those hurt most – the patients – get? Want the full story? Binge every episode of Doctor Billions ad-free now by subscribing to The Binge+. You’ll unlock over 60 true crime series instantly, get early access to drops on the first of every month, and hear exclusive bonus episodes. Search for the channel on Apple Podcasts or head to GetTheBinge.com. For behind-the-scenes details, join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. Doctor Billions is a production of Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound. Follow @sonypodcasts and discover more at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices at podcastchoices.com/adchoices. The Binge — feed your true crime obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 1:07Speaker 02

  They used to bring me rods. They might bring me a rod, and they want to know how many of these you could make.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  This is William Crowder. He was the owner of Crowder Machine and Tool Shop in Temecula, California. You're hearing a recording of him testifying in court. He has since passed away. In his testimony, Crowder admits to making both rods for Spinal Solutions and screws.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  With respect to the screws, did they go through any sort of testing that would test the mechanical function of the screw before they went off to Spinal Solutions?

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Not like it.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  He's a little cagey on the stand. At first, he says he did not make screws for Spinal Solutions, but then later, as questioning goes on, he says he did.

• 1:59Speaker 03

  And when you were paid, I assume you were paid for the screws, correct?

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  You were paid for the rods as well?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Whatever was on the invoice.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  He says he knew he was altering tools to be used by doctors.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  And did you ever register with the FDA as somebody who can either make or repair surgical tools that would be used on a reading setting?

• 2:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:28Speaker 03

  Did you have any background training or experience in making any sort of devices that would be implanted in humans?

• 2:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  He says he did not know what the rods and screws were for.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  So as far as making objects for Spinal Solutions, when they left your shop, you had no idea where they were going?

• 2:48Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  Nobody ever told you that they were going to human beings, correct?

• 2:51Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  But he was selling them to a company called Spinal Solutions that sold medical implants. He knew that.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Was it Spinal Solutions?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  And he did remember one more thing.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  Do you remember Roger Williams haggling with you over the price of screws, trying to get it down to $39?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yes, I remember that.

• 3:15Speaker 03

  And what was he telling you?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  He was trying to kill him for nothing.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Roger Williams, the owner of Spinal Solutions, which was charging thousands of dollars for one screw, he bargained with William Crowder to try to save a few bucks.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  I'm Ben Adair. From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, you're listening to Dr. Billions.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  This is episode six, Whack a Mole.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  The FBI started its investigation into hospital administrator Michael Drobot and his huge web of kickbacks and fraudulent billing in 2009. It took 14 years. One big break came when they flipped a Pacific Hospital accountant.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  There was an accountant named Naomi Haddon who would keep spreadsheets for some of the doctors of their kickback payments.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Former US Attorney Joe McNally.

• 4:21Speaker 04

  What she said was, you know, initially, she didn't realize that these were kickbacks. And then she realized once she was calculating out payments based on lumbar, whether hardware was used, had a spreadsheet to track all of that. She knew it was kickbacks and bribes and continued to participate.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Then, after the raids on Michael Drobot's private office and Pacific Hospital, the agents and prosecutors would try to perform their most difficult feat of magic yet: to turn an obscenely wealthy and evilly intelligent hospital administrator into a rat. It was time to set a meeting.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  His lawyers, he was represented by very able counsel, said, "Look, you had it wrong here. These aren't kickbacks. Work was being done under these contracts. These are legitimate contracts," pointing to, again, that defense, right?

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Ah, the old plausible deniability thing. The whole reason for all these well-papered quote-unquote "deals." Time to test it out. Let's see how this goes down.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Well, after the search warrants, Drobot had called up somebody who he didn't know was a doctor who was cooperating with us. And Drobot started coaching that guy on how to shore up the paperwork so that it would look like work was being done under the contract. It was like, make sure you bill for those services so we have documentation you did work, and they can't say it's a kickback. And he's captured on recording.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Mike Drobot calls the doctor directly. He thinks that would be a good idea.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so he says this, and he's coaching him on this, and it's very clear.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Plausible deniability needs to be real deniability.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  Right. Needs to be better. Right. And so Drobot's lawyers come in and, you know, make their pitch that, you know, this is, we have it, the government has it wrong. These were, you know, bona fide contracts. And then after that pitch, this recording is played.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Like they played it to the lawyers?

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Yes. Yeah. The, yeah, it's, it's over, right?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  And just like that, poof.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  And at that point, you know, Mike Drobot begins cooperating.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  From there, all the plausible deniability fell away, because the architect was now a corroborating witness. Dozens were indicted, including Michael Drobot and Daniel Capen, who we heard from in episode two. And all their arguments of, "Oh, I've done nothing wrong," were met with recordings, spreadsheets, and now Michael Drobot saying, "Actually." Even doctors who still claim they did nothing wrong, like Daniel Capen. Do you feel like he did anything wrong?

• 7:02Speaker 05

  Probably not engaging an attorney more frequently to review contracts. Do I think I did anything wrong on behalf of my practice of medicine? No, not at all.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Daniel Capen was the only convicted doctor who agreed to talk with us. In our interview, he maintained he did nothing wrong, saying it was more legalese that did him in. The Justice Department says that between 1998 and 2013, Pacific Hospital billed $142 million for Capen surgeries, and Capen received at least $5 million in kickbacks. For our part, we cannot know if all these surgeries were necessary. We cannot know how his patients suffered, only that they did because he wanted more and more money. What is your life like these days?

• 7:58Speaker 05

  I'm retired, living in Florida, enjoying my dog, and I've made some friends down here. And my friends from California and my kids come out, so I'm good.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Capen was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. He served 13. He lost his license and is no longer practicing medicine. Hospital administrator Michael Drobot was sentenced to 63 months in prison. That's over five years, and it was the max anyone got in this case. His cooperation helped propel Operation Backlash in San Diego, turning more fraudsters into more cooperators who then went on to provide more evidence and more information to the FBI.

• 8:44Speaker 06

  We had thousands of recordings.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Former Special Agent Jeff Horner.

• 8:48Speaker 06

  We had hundreds and hundreds of surveillance photos, videos, bank records, establishing who really controlled these corporations, right? So a lot of them, you have to kind of break that corporate veil, so to speak.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Operation Backlash went from 2012 until 2022. They indicted even more people than in Los Angeles.

• 9:08Speaker 06

  I want to say at one point, we probably had 50, 60 people indicted, and almost all of them pled out.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  That's who is punished. But the most interesting part of this whole saga, to me, isn't the prison terms, or who pled, or who didn't. It's this simple fact.

• 9:28Speaker 07

  Over the next couple of years, there was a decrease of almost 50% as far as workers comp spinal surgeries were happening. So while, again, we didn't allege that any of the surgeries were unnecessary because it's really hard to prove, it's pretty interesting that after this case goes public, that all of a sudden, half the surgeries aren't happening anymore.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  A 50% drop in workers comp spinal surgeries after the raid on Pacific Hospital. 50%.

• 10:03Speaker 07

  And that's partly due to the laws that were passed and the scrutiny and the regulation that came through. But one can imagine that some of that is because of surgeries that maybe shouldn't have happened.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  There were some big systemic changes, a giant overhaul of the California workers comp system that included a repeal of the spinal pass-through law.

• 10:26Speaker 07

  One of the laws that was passed prohibited healthcare providers who were convicted of healthcare fraud from participating in the workers comp system. So if you defrauded the system, that was it. You're done. You're not allowed to be part of the system anymore.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  John says, if you look at the stats, like that 50% reduction in back surgeries, it's clear that this case made a huge difference in terms of victims and potential victims. Shutting down DroBot's billion-dollar fraud machine saved an unimaginable amount of pain and suffering. Do you think there's less fraud now than there was then?

• 11:00Speaker 07

  Probably not.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Do you think there's more?

• 11:02Speaker 07

  Probably. We play whack-a-mole because it takes us years to shut one piece down. They're two steps ahead of us already. They've already moved on to the next thing and shut that down and moved to the next thing. It's just the nature of our system. There's places to commit fraud almost everywhere.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Do you feel like, are you more skeptical of your doctors?

• 11:22Speaker 07

  Sometimes. Sometimes when they refer me out to an MRI place, I was like, I wonder how much they're getting for that.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  A story that sticks with San Diego agent Jeff Horner is that of a woman named Tammy Martinez. She was operated on by a doctor named Lokene Tantawaye. Tantawaye pled guilty to taking kickbacks from Pacific Hospital, including for Tammy's surgery.

• 11:48Speaker 06

  It just reminds you that this really does matter. I mean, these are people's lives that are at stake and...

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Tammy's surgery ended in complications, and she'd lost her leg.

• 11:58Speaker 06

  And you have somebody like a Lokene Tantawaye that flies planes and lives this extravagant lifestyle and is not a really nice guy at all. He's kind of a turd in many ways. And here, this poor woman suffered just because of his greed. It's not just an insurance company that got overbilled, right? This was a woman that lost her leg. I mean, she was a truck driver. I mean, she lost her job, like she lost everything.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Lokene Tantawaye got five years for accepting over $3 million in bribes. Five years. We don't know the total number of victims.

• 12:37Speaker 00

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• 13:41Speaker 01

  When the FBI first found out about DroBot and the fraud schemes in Southern California, they made a calculated decision. They were going to focus on building this case, which meant letting others go.

• 13:53Speaker 07

  We really wanted to focus on what seemed to be a lot more egregious.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  They never picked up the counterfeit hardware scheme, despite what Robert Pereira says he took to the FDA. I did my due diligence. I took screws. I knew what I was doing. I'm going to the FDA and I need evidence. One of the jobs of the Federal Food and Drug Administration is to watch over medical devices and make sure that the things that go in your body are okay to go in your body. Surely, this would be easy for them. Medical hardware is highly regulated. Lots of paperwork, manifests, certificates of authenticity, chain of custody, customs receipts, inventory, tickets, serial numbers. Almost everything about these implants is tracked. Theoretically, that's what they're there to do. Excuse me?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Theoretically? They have a damn job, but man, I can tell you, the FDA didn't do their job when I went to them. Robert found his local FDA representative. He says he called her, met with her, gave her screws he'd taken. They didn't do anything for months and months. Be like, hey, there's six more cases going tomorrow. Are you guys going to do anything? I'm telling you, I will testify that these screws are being made at a machine shop in Temecula. These are not real screws. These are counterfeit screws, and we're doing five, six cases tomorrow, and then five, six cases the next day. Are you guys going to do anything? They didn't do nothing for months.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  We contacted the FDA too, but they did not respond to us. The FDA, they have a job to do, and they didn't fucking do it. What the fuck? Where's the accountability? Several months after Robert first reached out, the FDA inspected Spinal Solutions. That was in 2011. They noticed things like poor record-keeping and inadequate labeling, and issued warning letters to the company as a result. Roger Williams responded to the warning, saying they'd fix things, but the FDA didn't buy it. So in 2012, they went back and inspected Spinal Solutions again. And again, noted things like poor procedures and record-keeping, but they didn't test any of the hardware.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  In 2013, Spinal Solutions agreed to an FDA request to voluntarily recall some of its hardware, but the public was never alerted to the actual potential harm. Counterfeit hardware was never explicitly mentioned. Robert still does not understand why any of this happened the way it did. It was fucking horrible. It took years off of my life dealing with these fucking morons. And that's the thing, how's this guy making this much money? Because no one else is that crooked and that horrible of a person to do this. You and I, all three of us are capable of making 26 million a year. Just how bad do you want to fuck your fellow man?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  And what level of depth of horrific things would you be willing to do? We don't know what happened to Roger Williams. We reached out to him many times for this podcast and never heard back. Spinal Solutions was dissolved by 2013. Williams filed for bankruptcy in 2014. In a 2013 deposition, he noted that he was living in a seaside condo in Solano Beach, California with his daughter. He was never tried in court for the allegations of making fake hardware and was never held accountable. Bill Reynolds says he also spoke with many, many different potential prosecutors, from local DAs to postal inspectors on up to the US attorneys.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  And the US attorney brought in FBI agents from the hit unit out of DC. We had IRS, CID. I mean, I collected a bunch of cards, and I was like, oh my God. I never knew so many three-letter agencies existed. And it was alphabet soup with all the different agents there.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  He describes one meeting with the Office of the Inspector General for the US Department of Health and Human Services. This is the department that oversees the FDA, Medicare, Medicaid. It's a big deal. He says he brought all his evidence with him: purchase orders, invoices, spreadsheets, even samples of the counterfeit hardware.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  This person, you know, everybody in the room laid quiet while she would ask these questions, and we would show our data, and we'd show the counterfeit hardware, and then we'd show the surgeries that were pending. And they'd go, okay. We'd leave. A couple hours later, and we scratched our head, wondering, do you think we'll ever hear from them again?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  No, we never did.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  So why all this inaction? Why wasn't anyone doing anything? Phil Reynolds thinks he knows why. Just like his old insurance company, he says, the US government was too scared of the financial hit from all the potential victims. He says one prosecutor told him as much.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  He did not want to have the government responsible for having the revisions of taking the counterfeit hardware out and paying for these surgeries.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  The numbers were just too much, much too much. So as a result, everyone just continues to suffer in silence.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  You might understand why Mark and Bill would have gotten fed up. But in California and at the federal level, there are mechanisms for private citizens to sue companies when the government doesn't seem to be doing its job enforcing the law. They're called whistleblower laws, and there are even special lawyers who take up these cases.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  My name is Justin Berger. I'm an attorney based in California. I represent the whistleblower, the person calling out the fraud.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Mark Sirsancy and Bill Reynolds circled their wagons. They'd been through a lot, a lot of harassment, they say, and a lot of notifying people whose job it is to crack down on everything they'd been investigating.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  They wanted someone to pay attention to this. They had gone to different authorities, and they didn't feel like anyone was taking it seriously.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  What were your initial impressions when you first met Bill and Mark, when you first heard about this? What was first going through your head?

• 20:34Speaker 02

  Some of it frankly sounded outlandish. Some aspects of it you might hear about in a fantastical TV show.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Whistleblower lawsuits are very complicated and can take years. You can make money off of them, but it's a very long and winding road. First, you file a lawsuit against the company you think is breaking the law. And since you're sort of suing on behalf of the government that's not doing its job, the court lets the government know, hey, here's what these guys are saying. What do you think? The government will then do its own investigating and decide whether or not it wants to join your suit. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. But here's the thing, your lawsuit is effectively on pause until the government makes a decision. And this pause can last years.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Bill and Mark decided to focus on the fake medical hardware and with Justin's help, filed a lawsuit in 2012. And then they waited and they waited.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  I tell potential whistleblower clients all the time, civil litigation is not for the faint of heart. The average complex civil litigation case is a matter of years, is a matter of years, just on average.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Their case hit one pause after another. Eventually, the Justice Department asked the judge to wait till operations backlash and spinal cap were done, so this case wouldn't interfere.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  The judge agreed with them for a long time, which made a long case even longer.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Is that the primary reason why it stretched on for 12, 13, 14 years now?

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Oh, man. I know it was, it was years of delay that it caused.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  What could Mark and Bill do? They went to the press.

• 22:32Speaker 07

  Would you blow the whistle? These people did. My name is Mark Sirsancy, and I'm a whistleblower. My name is Bill Reynolds, and I'm a whistleblower.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Splashy TV segments, nearly an hour on a CBS show called Whistleblower.

• 22:47Speaker 07

  They stopped at nothing to expose the truth. I worked undercover gathering all the evidence I could.

• 22:57Speaker 07

  I was just wanting to expose this, and I felt like no one was listening.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Most importantly, Bill and Mark connected with the patients who they believed were victims of this alleged scam. Derica Moses from episode one was one of them.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  The pain has traveled up to my neck, to my shoulders. I don't sleep. I'm positive it is because of the counterfeit hardware that was placed in my back.

• 23:24Speaker 07

  The best way to sum up my postsurgical injuries is I'm sitting here as a ticking time bomb, ready to explode.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Do you think your doctor knew that the hardware was counterfeit? Yes. Absolutely.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  This spurred dozens of new lawsuits, even while Bill and Mark's case went nowhere. It's still going nowhere.

• 23:44Speaker 07

  It was just horrific. It was, I think that, I think the case was worse, if not the same, as all the stuff I went through with the rental.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Mark Sirsancy.

• 23:52Speaker 07

  I mean, they had these super high-paid, $1,000, $2,000 an hour attorneys that were really good. We got our butts kicked all the time of things that were so obvious, and we're just sitting here, and then they would justify why. And the attorneys that the bad guys had, those guys were, those guys were the sharks.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Mark and Bill, for all their work and personal sacrifices, really didn't see a big payoff at the end of the day. I'm sure they, they sleep better than the defendants, but monetarily, there was no windfall for them. If they were to go back in time, I doubt they'd do it again, given all they went through in this case, and I wouldn't blame them.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Of all the victims of the allegedly fake hardware, only Derica Moses made it to trial. We've been hearing excerpts from that trial all season. And while there was testimony about counterfeit hardware, in the end, the jury decided she did not prove anyone or anything was liable.

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• 26:06Speaker 02

  Is there any justice for these people? I feel so bad for the ones that are the victims, I just really do.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  We found Tammy Gore, who lost her husband Bob, through a Facebook group called Colly White Former Patient Support Group. White was one of the doctors suspected of taking fake hardware from Spinal Solutions. The charges were later dropped, and he's denied it. That Facebook group had 173 members, 173. Gene Warren is one of them. Like Tammy, Gene found out about everything from the news.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  When I was watching TV and thought the Spinal Solution that came out of California, and then they, the local news here was talking about it and how they had Dr. Colly White and how he had, he had gotten stuff from Spinal Solutions. And it's like, oh, oh, I think that's me.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  More than a dozen people filed suits against doctors or hospitals for pain, suffering, medical malpractice, and damages. And at this point, all those suits have settled, and all the victims we reached out to turned us down for interviews, most saying they're no longer allowed to talk to the press. But that doesn't mean they're happy or feel they got justice. According to one victim, who asked to remain anonymous, the money was not that great, certainly not compared to the suffering they went through. And at the end of the day, this victim felt the fix was in.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  This entire medical fraud scheme and its agents did a great job at silencing the truth.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  This is from an email they wrote us and said we could quote anonymously.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  It all comes down to risk versus reward. As much as I want to tell my story, the risk outweighs the reward. It is truly a very disgusting situation to put a patient or a victim, human being, through. My hands are tied and my mouth taped shut.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  This person had a strong suspicion that all the victims' lawyers were in on it too, that they colluded with the attorneys for Drobot and the others to force low settlements and silence. We can't confirm that, but this is also not the first time we've heard that idea.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  As for Bill Reynolds and Mark Sirsancy, they are not happy about how all this ended up.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  They all belong in prison for life. The harm that they have caused is just incomprehensible.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Does whistleblower attorney Justin Berger see justice here?

• 28:54Speaker 02

  That's a big question. There was partial justice here. I don't think it's near complete, and I think there are patients out there who

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Still have massive questions. I think there's a lot of money that disappeared that raises the cost on all of us for healthcare. I asked Bill Reynolds who he thought won.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  I'm at the end of my career. I'm ready to hang up my shingle. I'm ready to enjoy my life and I think I've had enough of this. And yeah, I'm, he won.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Mark Sorsansy spoke a lot about being unhappy with his lawyers on his case and about how the case unfolded. In the end, Justin Berger is right. Mark wouldn't do it again, wouldn't be a mole, wouldn't have filed a whistleblower case. It wasn't worth it. It was hell. For me, it's worth it if the patients receive the help that they deserved and they never got it. Do you feel that the patients were forgotten? Yes. The patients were never a priority. They were a chess piece in this whole game.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  There is one guy who spent years evading justice. Not Joe Bot, but the smarmy toupee wearing rat at the heart of it all, Paul Randall. Randall is one of the first to plead guilty in Operation Spinal Cap. In 2012, he pled guilty to conspiracy to commit male fraud. But his sentencing was delayed and delayed and delayed while he kept cooperating with the FBI. But then in 2017, he was arrested by US Marshals, this time, a new fraud allegation that Randall was targeting the University of California Student Health Plan in a $12 million fraud. Eventually, he was sentenced to just 15 months. He served it. And that's

• 30:50Speaker 01

  when things got really complicated. Because this guy is like a one man fraud machine.

• 30:57Speaker 07

  Wish I could show you what's behind here, but I can describe. I've seen over a dozen Ferraris, Lamborghinis, a Bugatti, Lotus, several G wagons.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  This is from CBS Morning News earlier this year.

• 31:11Speaker 07

  These items had been owned by Paul Randall, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud this year in one of the largest Medi-Cal fraud cases in California history.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Earlier this year, Paul Randall pled guilty to yet another medical fraud. Prosecutors say Randall made over $270 million in fraudulent billings to Medi-Cal, the state medical insurance program for the poorest Californians. He did it, they say, while he was out on bond, waiting to be sentenced for his previous crimes. What's most egregious about this is it was basically no questions asked. He basically exploited a loophole in the state's processing system. In their sentencing memo, prosecutors write, defendant has engaged in fraud for more than 30 years at both the state and federal levels, and he has engaged in more sophisticated fraud schemes as he ages. Defendant's pattern of criminal activity

• 32:04Speaker 01

  reflects a brazen disregard for the law, and no punishment to date has deterred defendant from repeatedly committing the same type of crime. Just last month, it finally happened. Randall was sentenced to 30 years, meaning he could die in prison.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Have any of these guys shown any kind of remorse?

• 32:31Speaker 06

  You know, Sean O'Keefe, I have a soft spot for Sean O'Keefe.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  This is Jeff Horner from San Diego's Operation Backlash. Sean O'Keefe was a San Diego lawyer who made millions buying and selling patients and suing insurance companies.

• 32:46Speaker 06

  He lost everything. He lost his yachts. His wife, who was a plastic surgeon, divorced him. He had a beautiful home in Coronado Island. And the last couple of years of his life, he was living in a Motel 6 in Laredo, Texas. All he had was the social security check. And he called me to come to the VA in San Diego. And I went and visited him in the hospital and he had a pretty significant brain tumor. And he said to me, he's like, you know, Jeff, I'm going to die here soon, but I just want to thank you for everything that happened. And I'm like, what do you mean, thank you? He goes, well, you know, I was an alcoholic. I was selling my clients. I was doing all these horrible things. And

• 33:31Speaker 06

  you gave me a chance to redeem myself. And you gave me a chance to make right for what I did wrong.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  By working with the FBI and becoming such an important part of the prosecution, O'Keefe felt he could finally live an honest life and make amends.

• 33:47Speaker 06

  And he says, you know, now I know I'm going to die here in a couple of weeks. I know that I can at least look God in the face and say, I made mistakes, but I did everything I could to make it right. And he literally thanked me for giving him that opportunity. And he passed away, I think it was last year.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  We live in a time when greed and corruption have been absolutely normalized. It seems normal for people to live their lives in pursuit of money for money's sake, to become millionaires, billionaires, and do outrageous, sometimes terrible things in order to get there. But it hits different when it's doctors, doesn't it? We want doctors to be somehow above it all, above us, more noble, more compassionate, smarter, better. Because we need doctors. We have to trust them. But despite what you see on TV shows like The Pit and House, doctors are not superhuman. Turns out, they're just like the rest of

• 35:04Speaker 01

  us. A lot of them are good, but a lot of them are greedy. And some of them are willing to go pretty far to fuck their fellow man. So how do you tell the difference? According to one medical ethicist we spoke with, it's actually not that hard. Does your doctor meet with you? Do they listen to you? Do they answer your questions and help you feel at ease? Those are all signs of a good doctor, one who takes your trust seriously. Do they brush you off? Do they force you into a care plan? Do they make you feel like you have no other choices other than what they're recommending? Those are signs a doctor may

• 35:45Speaker 01

  not be putting your care first. At the end of the day, trust yourself and trust your feelings. And don't be scared to say no thanks and find somebody you like better. There are good doctors out there. You just can't assume they're easy to find.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  This has been Dr. Billions.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Dr. Billions is produced by Western Sound for Sony Music Entertainment's The Binge. I'm your host, Ben Adair. I'm also the executive producer for Western Sound. From Sony Music Entertainment, the executive producers are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis. Dr. Billions was reported and produced by Dana Balut. It was written by Dana Balut and Ben Adair. Najib Amini is our fact checker. Michael Rayfield is the mix engineer. Music courtesy of North Figaroa Studios. Legal by Sam Borenzweig at Clarus Law, P L L C.

• 38:03Speaker 00

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