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Last of patient brokers gets two years
By JEFF TESTERMAN, Times Staff Writer TAMPA -- Renee Marcus Steely was a pitiful sight Thursday in the center of a quiet federal courtroom. The 60-year-old grandmother wept after testifying about being broke, unemployed, afflicted with chronic health problems and the sole caregiver for her frail, 95-year-old mother. It has been a rapid descent for the Spring Hill woman. Just a few years ago, Steely was Dr. Renee Steely, a well-traveled entrepreneur in a health care cottage industry that raked in millions by matching patients with treatment facilities. But Steely's pitches to patients were often as phony as her Ph.D., a $150 certificate from a California diploma mill called the College of Divine Metaphysics. Her business was brokering patients into treatment for bounties as high as $3,000 a head. When she collected on patients insured by Medicare or Medicaid, the brokering became a federal crime, one that put the FBI and federal prosecutors in Tampa on the track of one of the largest health care scams in U.S. history. On Thursday, unmoved by the defendant's tears, a federal judge handed Steely a 24-month prison sentence and ordered her to repay the U.S. government $243,806. The sentencing marked the end of a grand jury inquiry that began seven years ago. The score card: an estimated $20-million in fines and restitution and some 50 defendants convicted, including probation officers, hospital executives and a Ohio judge. The inquiry also led to antibrokering laws in three states and put several treatment centers out of business. "These people did what they did for greed. I'm glad they're getting their comeuppance," said Karen Robbins, 58, a Cheboygan, Mich., grandmother who was brokered into a psychiatric facility by Steve Hamparian, a convicted drug trafficker who was one of Steely's hired hands. In 1993, Robbins answered a television ad for a weight-loss program and was put on a plane for the University Behavioral Center in Orlando. But Robbins was horrified to find herself confined against her will in a psychiatric facility. Her story, "I'm Fat, I'm Not Crazy," was one of several chronicled by the St. Petersburg Times in a 1993 series, "The Patient Pipeline." The series recounted the stories of alcoholics, addicts, obese people and others who wanted help but were instead lured into inappropriate or unnecessary treatment, often with promises of free flights, co-payment waivers and spalike care that never materialized. The Times series sparked the grand jury investigation. The inquiry uncovered a network of patient brokers as diverse as New Jersey businessman William DeMaria, prominent South Florida physician Richard Tyson, former Assistant New Jersey Commissioner of Health Peter Stratton and Ronald W. Greenfield, a convicted murderer who helped Demaria shred financial records subpoenaed by the Tampa grand jury. The four were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 to 24 months and ordered to pay a total of nearly $5-million in restitution. From the late 1980s to the mid 1990s the network of brokers made a fortune by finding "heads for beds" and filling the glut of treatment facilities that had grown up around the United States. Many of the new facilities were in Florida. Brokered patients were shuttled to the Sun Coast Hospital in Largo, the Manors in Tarpon Springs, Heritage Beverly Hills in rural Citrus County and Palmview Hospital in Lakeland. The network used bribes, kickbacks and phony employment contracts to disguise the illegal activity. It is a federal crime to give anything of value for the referral of a Medicare or Medicaid patient. The best brokers made so much money they invested in their own treatment facilities. Steely, who connected with all the major brokers, was a part-owner of several partial hospitalization programs. At a detox program in New Port Richey called Daylight of West Florida, Steely recruited patients in Alabama and flew them to Florida at her own expense, according to the FBI. Steely, who used an 800 number to attract patients, was indicted in March 2000 and accused of taking more than $3-million in illegal kickbacks. She agreed to assist the federal investigation and pleaded guilty in July 2001 to a single count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. In testimony Thursday before U.S. District Judge James S. Moody, FBI Special Agent Pauline Roberts detailed how Steely had deducted kickback-related expenses totaling $1.26-million on her 1993 and 1994 tax returns. Most of the treatment centers that paid kickbacks listed them as a phony expenses in order to get reimbursement from Medicare, Roberts said. Steely appeared repentant, telling Moody, "If I had a rewind button, I'd rewind my whole life." She asked for mercy, complaining of kidney stones, pulmonary blockage and emphysema. She had her attorney gingerly escort her 95-year-old mother to the bench to give halting testimony about her reliance on Steely. Judge Moody had just one question. "Do you wish Renee would have thought about all this before she committed all these crimes?" he asked. Steely's mother seemed not to hear. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert T. Monk took issue with Steely's health claims. An FBI review of her records showed no emphysema, he said, and her pulmonary condition would improve if she "would stop smoking cigarettes." Steely protested Moody's condition that she undergo drug testing upon completing her prison term. But a probation official rose to say that she had recently tested positive for marijuana. Robbins, the woman who kept telling people nine years ago that she wasn't crazy, isn't overweight anymore. She found a treatment center that helped her shed nearly 100 pounds. "I felt so betrayed when the brokers brought me to Florida that I still don't trust people," Robbins said. "But I've accomplished the changes I wanted to, and that's made a difference in my life."
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