Drug rehab faces investigations into labor practices and Medicaid fraud

June 16, 2019 Posted by MONICA RICHARDSON Uncategorized 2 Comments

A sign at the entrance to the Cenikor Foundation, a private, not-for-profit behavioral health facility, is pictured in Deer Park, Texas on Thursday, April 18, 2019.

Rehab in Louisiana – uses its clients / to do forced labor for free –

State officials in Texas and Louisiana have launched multiple probes into the Cenikor Foundation following an investigation by Reveal that found the prominent drug rehab has turned patients into an unpaid labor force for private companies.

Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found that the nonprofit has sent thousands of patients to work without pay at hundreds of for-profit companies over the years – including Exxon, Shell and Walmart – in likely violation of federal labor law, according to former federal labor officials.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry is investigating Cenikor for possible Medicaid fraud. The program receives Medicaid funding and has received millions in state contracts for behavioral health services. A spokesman declined to comment on the investigation but said that “if there’s evidence of a crime that involves Medicaid, that’s something our office takes a strong interest in.”

In addition to the government investigations, former patients are suing the program for back wages in four separate lawsuits, and two of Cenikor’s biggest work contracts have stopped using workers from the program.

read full story:

https://www.revealnews.org/article/drug-rehab-faces-investigations-into-labor-practices-and-medicaid-fraud/

Tags: Cenikor Foundation Rehab Fraud

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About MONICA RICHARDSON

Monica Richardson was born and raised in New York City in the most northern part of Manhattan, "Inwood" an Irish Catholic neighborhood known for its gorgeous parks, tree lined streets, local bars, Jewish delicatessens, and basketball courts. Monica went to Catholic schools, studied piano and sang, played basketball and was on the swimming team. As a teenager she transplanted to Hawaii where her Dad moved after her parents divorced. Later she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting and singing studying at Playhouse West, The Groundings, Santa Monica College and UCLA Extension Program. She worked on Movies and TV shows - sang in Japan, worked at 20th Century Fox, and LACER After Schools Program. Richardson made her first Documentary film, The 13th Step that won numerous awards and can be seen on AMAZON, Tubi and Vimeo.

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somethingelse
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July 5, 2019 at 6:18 AM

Its fine to address these blatantly bad cases –

but i sometimes wonder if they act more as a decoy that distract from the overall massive epidemic of fraud by all the so called good aa rehabs – none of them are good. AA is a massive fraud

The whole 40 billion /yr AA rehab system does not alter the natural history of alcoholism and ultimately wastes all recovery resource that could go to vastly better methods thus AA denies best medical practices to society harming everyone. AA does not exist in a vacuum. AA Inc authorizes the use of its 12 step copyright for profiteering fraud harming us all.

as Gabrielle Glaser said “Doctors who recommend AA instead of vastly better methods that work 78% long term – are simply guilty of malpractice.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
fair warning – I need to vent some anger! read on using your own volition

TheFix is now deleting the best comments that criticize AA. Some weak posting is allowed but they Especially targeting the best comments that prove Pro-AA-comments are dead wrong lies.

For example AA members have been screaming innocence for criticism against AA for hijacking the medical system etc by claiming that AA does not say AA is the only way. Well i posted AA BB page 500 which does have a story on an AA member who said AA is the only way for a guy who drank like him. Well …They went ape shit and said I was posting comments that are killing people. then after their insane reaction to quotes from the AA BB They said they rest case and a few hours later that comment was deleted obviously because the posters made a pact with the moderators to delete the comment. Then a few days later they banned me for responding to a commenters who said i had no recovery and TSM was just an excuse to continue to drink. which was off topic and personal insults against their policy – but they were not banned. I was banned for saying that AA does not alter the natural history of alcoholism and they were a blind biased ignorant AA pushing nincompoop.

At one time thefix was better when it was first started. I should know better. That whole site is set up to send people to the AA dominated rehab racket. My posting there supports them like arguing with Trump stirs up support for Trump.
somethingelse
· Reply

July 10, 2019 at 11:16 AM

Well Well Well looky here …. TheFix dot com …. violates law with dirty reviews.
https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20190703a67
Perhaps this is why thefix was going ape shit taking their shit out sideways on me.
Massive, re-post this as a main feature article and pass on the buzz to the west coast newspapers.
Newspapers need to warn defrauded victims and perhaps do class action to recover fraud.

below is a small abstract – see link for huge legal ease findings and judge’s analysis etc.

July 1, 2019.
Case No. 2:18-cv-00923-SVW-RAO.

GRASSHOPPER HOUSE, LLC, Plaintiff, v. CLEAN & SOBER MEDIA LLC, ET AL., Defendants. CLIFFSIDE MALIBU, ET AL. Counterclaim Plaintiffs, v. GRASSHOPPER HOUSE, LLC, ET AL., Counterclaim Defendants.
United States District Court, C.D. California.

Applicable Law: 28 U.S.C. § 1331
Cause: 28 U.S.C. § 1331 Fed. Question
Nature of Suit: 890 Other Statutory Actions

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~ here is a small summary of the dirt ~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FINDINGS OF FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW, AND JUDGMENT

STEPHEN V. WILSON, District Judge.
I. Introduction

On February 19, 2019, the Court held a jury trial in this action, in which the jury rendered a verdict finding in favor of Plaintiff Grasshopper House, LLC on its claims under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a). The jury also found in favor of Counterclaim Defendants Grasshopper House, LLC, Passages Silver Strand, LLC, Chris Prentiss, and Pax Prentiss (collectively or individually, “Passages”) on the Lanham Act counterclaim advanced by Defendants and/or Counterclaim Plaintiffs Cliffside Malibu, Clean & Sober Media LLC, Richard Taite, Sunset Malibu, Cliffside Malibu II, Cliffside Malibu Outpatient Services, Cliffside Malibu 3, and Recovery Malibu (collectively or individually, “Cliffside”) regarding Passages’ advertisements representing the existence of a “cure” for addiction. See Dkt. 352.

II. Findings of Fact

A. Cliffside’s Acquisition of The Fix

bla bla bla >>>>—–>

Following acquisition by C&S Media, The Fix published two separate statements on its website to describe the process for writing reviews of treatment centers and to provide the overarching goals of The Fix’s website.

The first statement, which the Court will refer to as the “Mission Statement,” was published on November 17, 2013 and stated the following:

The Fix is the world’s leading website about addiction and recovery, featuring a daily mix of breaking news, exclusive interviews, investigative reports, essays and blogs on sober living, lifestyle and cultural resources, as well as knowledge and wisdom from expert counsel. We also offer rigorously reported Rehab Reviews, with input from thousands of alumni, plus extensive directories and practical guides for dealing with addiction and related mental health and life issues. Further, The Fix provides an extensive forum for debating relevant issues, allowing a large community the opportunity to express its experiences and opinions on all matters pertinent to addiction and recovery without bias or control from The Fix. Our stated editorial mission — and sole bias — is to destigmatize all forms of addiction and mental health matters, support recovery, and assist toward humane policies and resources.
Trial Ex. 1874.

The second statement, hereafter referred to as the “Process Statement,” was published on October 1, 2014 and proclaimed:

To create our reviews, we invite selected centers to solicit former clients to complete a detailed, 20-question survey. The Fix requires at least five completed surveys before a review is generated. The surveys include questions about accommodations, meals, residents, staff, activities, and more. Alumni respond anonymously and confidentially, and reviews are written based on their responses and follow-up questions where applicable.
Trial Ex. 214.

B. The Passages Review

At the time C&S Media acquired The Fix, there was a pre-existing review of Passages Malibu, an addiction treatment center owned by Passages, written by the previous editorial staff of The Fix in 2011. See Trial Exs. 2451, 2452. The review page for the Passages Malibu facility included the tag line “THE REHAB REVIEW: The Inside Scoop From Hundreds of Former Clients.” Trial Exs. 2451, 2452. The Passages review included alleged quotes from former clients of Passages’ treatment, describing the sources of the quotes as an “alum,” “former resident,” or “former client.” Trial Ex. 2451. The review rated Passages 5 out of 5 stars for accommodations and food, but 1 out of 5 stars for treatment, culminating in an overall rating of 1 out of 5 stars. Id. By June 4, 2011, Passages’ overall star rating had been increased to 2 stars. Trial Ex. 2452.

The Fix continued to maintain the Passages review on its website after being acquired by C&S Media. Around September 2014, The Fix introduced a new rating system for its Rehab Reviews that allowed for more precise half-star ratings, so The Fix made adjustments to the ratings of many of the treatment centers. See Trial Ex. 1764. By December 2014, Passages Malibu’s overall star rating had increased from 2 to 2.5 stars. See Trial Exs. 1033, 2454. After a reformatting of The Fix’s website, The Fix also began to display banner ads for Cliffside Malibu at the top of the Passages review page and displayed links to the corresponding Rehab Review page for Cliffside Malibu. See Trial Exs. 2454, 2455.

Pax Prentiss, the CEO of Passages, stated that a search for “Passages Malibu” on Google would display a link to The Fix’s review of Passages just below the link to the Passages website on the first page of the search results. Dkt. 371 ¶ 11. Internal Cliffside emails revealed that Cliffside urged prospective clients to read the Passages review before making a decision as to whether to enroll with Passages or Cliffside, and some of these clients made the decision to sign up with Cliffside Malibu after reading the Passages review. See Trial Exs. 301, 306, 406. In one email responding to an inquiry from a prospective client seeking addiction treatment, Taite gave the following suggestion: “I would do my due diligence and simply type in passages Malibu reviews into your Google bar and do the same with us and see how others view us both so that you are comfortable.” Trial Ex. 305. Cliffside characterized other clients it received as “stolen” from Passages, including one who had believed she was calling Passages Malibu but instead had called the number for Cliffside Malibu. See Trial Ex. 407.

C. Cliffside’s Concealment of Ownership of The Fix

Although Taite acquired The Fix through C&S Media, Taite did not want to publicize the connection between The Fix and Cliffside.

Emails from November 2013 between Jay Levin, the editor-in-chief of The Fix at the time of the acquisition by C&S Media, and McCabe, in her previous role as an editor of The Fix, reveal that The Fix had full knowledge that Taite’s wife, Delphene Robertson, was the official owner and CEO of C&S Media. Trial Ex. 288. Levin acknowledged that Taite “does not want to be publicly associated with The Fix and there are good business reasons for this,” and Levin requested that McCabe, who had a pre-existing personal relationship with Taite, be “discrete” in what information McCabe shares about Taite with the editorial staff. Id. In February 2014, in order to keep Taite’s ownership of The Fix through Robertson and C&S Media confidential, Levin instructed an editor at The Fix to respond to an inquiry from a different addiction treatment center about the owner of The Fix by saying that The Fix “is owned by a private individual who does not own a treatment center.” Ex. 290. By 2016, Taite became the sole owner of C&S Media by acquiring the company from Robertson. See 2/20 AM Tr. at 13.

Levin, who had been hired by Taite as the editor-in-chief of The Fix shortly after the acquisition by C&S Media, sent an email to Taite on June 18, 2014, in which Levin decided to “step aside from wearing the ad director’s hat.” Trial Ex. 294. Levin cited frustration with Taite for Taite’s “intention to manipulate the reviews” of addiction rehab centers on The Fix and Taite’s efforts to “pick and choose who can advertise” on The Fix. Id. Levin warned Taite that “[o]nce public and known through the industry, the likelihood is it would permanently crash ad sales and may even invite FTC investigation and lawsuits.” Id. McCabe, who replaced Levin as the second editor-in-chief of The Fix, was a longtime friend of Robertson and previously had been the editor for Taite’s book. 2/19 PM Tr. at 36-38.

An email exchange between Taite and McCabe in March 2017 revealed Taite’s efforts to keep Cliffside’s ownership of The Fix secret from the other editors at The Fix. McCabe represented that “my writers and staff are not aware of a connection between The Fix and [Cliffside Malibu],” and Taite responded by saying that “I don’t want these guys [at The Fix] knowing anything” about the connection between The Fix and Cliffside. Trial Ex. 900. In that email exchange, Taite also instructed McCabe to remove an entire paragraph of an article The Fix had written regarding Cliffside Malibu, asking McCabe to “please stop giving other rehabs credit” for Cliffside’s work. Id. McCabe complied with Taite’s request and removed the paragraph from the article. Id.

Other actions taken by Taite confirm the close relationship between Taite, Cliffside Malibu, and The Fix. By February 10, 2014, only a few months after C&S Media acquired The Fix, Taite manually changed the overall star rating for Cliffside Malibu from 4 to 5 stars, without conducting any additional surveys of former Cliffside clients. See Trial Exs. 215, 216. McCabe testified that Taite “on his own called somebody” at The Fix and “told them to bump [Cliffside Malibu’s overall rating] up to five stars without me or Jay Levin or anyone knowing.” 2/19 PM Tr. at 88. In April 2014, Taite also sent an email to The Fix demanding that The Fix change the order of treatment centers as listed in the directory on The Fix for centers in Malibu, specifically requesting that the centers be listed in the following order: “Cliffside, visions, visions, sunset, creative care, Canyon, Canyon, Malibu Horizon, journey, paradigm, Soba, promises, passages.” Trial Ex. 291. In the same email, Taite conveyed his frustration that “I ask for something simple to be done [on The Fix] and I get blown off and treated like a redheaded stepchild.” Id. In January 2015, Taite also organized a re-review of Genesis, one of Cliffside’s treatment centers, and told McCabe to write the new review based on former client surveys “without my input, so that if anybody ever asks you, you can tell them the truth, that it was done like any other review.” Trial Ex. 225.

In an email from July 2017 Taite conveyed to an employee of Cliffside Malibu of the belief that Cliffside’s competitors “are trained to simply talk shit about Cliffside and why Cliffside is a piece of shit why they are better,” and Taite admitted that “I know this to be true, because before I had a commercial, I did the same thing, to promises and passages, that’s how I filled Cliffside!” Trial Ex. 952. At trail, Taite confirmed that, before Cliffside began to run television advertisements, Cliffside would purchase online advertisements for key words associated with Cliffside’s competitors: “We would buy the name from promises. Passages would run commercials we would buy the name for Passages. That is just what you did back then and now, they’re doing it to us.” 2/20 AM Tr. at 36-37.

At her deposition, McCabe admitted that The Fix intentionally did not disclose its affiliation with Cliffside because “if people knew [The Fix] was associated with the rehab [Cliffside Malibu], they might question our articles. So I wasn’t going to like throw up a beacon.” 2/19 PM Tr. at 44. McCabe testified at trial that she believed that Taite’s relationship with The Fix did not affect The Fix’s operations and did not make The Fix biased. Id. at 41. McCabe testified that she did not even consider The Fix to be affiliated with Cliffside and that the editorial staff had always been separate. McCabe similarly stated that she believed Taite “was never involved in anything” that happened at The Fix. Id. The Court finds that McCabe’s testimony about Taite’s involvement with The Fix is not credible and is refuted by the documentary evidence showing Taite’s direct involvement in the content of the rehab reviews on multiple occasions.

D. Passages’ Attempts to Remove the Review

Passages was aware of The Fix’s review of the Passages Malibu facility and wanted the review to be taken down. Pax Prentiss testified that he believed the Passages review was false or “highly inaccurate” when it was first posted in 2011. 2/19 AM Tr. at 57, 84.

Passages contacted The Fix’s editorial team on several occasions to request that The Fix remove the Passages review from its website, but The Fix denied all of Passages’ requests. For example, on July 16, 2014, The Fix emailed Passages, stating: “In response to your last email about taking your review down, I was told all reviews will remain active.” Trial Ex. 201. The Fix additionally noted that the Passages review ranks highly on Google and receives significant traffic, and The Fix implicitly invited Passages to agree to a new review of Passages Malibu, advising that “your new review with us would only go up in rating.” Id. The Fix also informed Passages of the traffic and exposure that the Passages review had received, and, in fact, three of the top 20 key word searches used in connection with The Fix were related to Passages. See Trial Exs. 111, 201.

During the time that Passages repeatedly asked The Fix to take down the Passages review, McCabe, then the editor-in-chief of The Fix, attempted to locate any of the surveys that may have been completed in connection with the initial Passages review published in 2011. See 2/19 PM Tr. at 70-73. On March 6, 2015, McCabe emailed May Wilkerson, a former employee of The Fix, to ask whether Wilkerson had any information about where the information in the Passages review came from. Trial Ex. 1696. Wilkerson responded that she did not have any such information and referred McCabe to Hunter Slaton, the former editor of the Rehab Reviews section of The Fix at the time the Passages review was written. Id.

The following day, McCabe emailed Anna David, a longtime employee of The Fix at the time, to inquire if David “ha[d] any idea where the info for the rehab reviews came from before we did them on surveymonkey.” Trial Ex. 230. In the email, McCabe specifically noted that “Passages, for instance, has several quotes which I can’t find in the surveys submitted by their alumni.” Id. Ultimately, McCabe was unable to find any written submissions from Passages alumni dating back to March 2011 when the Passages review was first written. 2/19 PM Tr. at 73. The only written reviews for Passages identified by McCabe were written after 2011 and did not specifically contain any of the language used in the 2011 review. See Trial Ex. 235; see also 2/19 PM Tr. at 74-76, 78 (identifying the Passages review as “one of these many reviews from 2011 for which we didn’t have SurveyMonkey surveys”).

On July 18, 2016, Passages sent a letter to McCabe in response to an email offering for The Fix to conduct a “re-review” of Passages Malibu that would replace the existing review and rating of Passages on The Fix. See Trial Ex. 699. In the letter, Passages complained that the review of Passages on The Fix did not comply with the Process Statement and demanded that The Fix remove the Passages review. Id. McCabe responded to Passages’ letter, stating that “[u]nder prior management, the review process may have been different, but that does not mean there is anything wrong with the earlier reviews. They are all comprehensive and thorough, and we believe that to be the case about the review of Passages Malibu.” See Trial Ex. 745. At trial, McCabe elaborated that the “different” process that might have been used by previous editors, based on McCabe’s conversations with those editors, was “more old-school journalism” involving talking to alumni by phone or in person and simply taking notes during the conversation. 2/19 PM Tr. at 77-78.

After its requests to remove the Passages review from The Fix were denied, Passages never agreed to submit to a re-review as McCabe had offered. See 2/19 AM Tr. at 65-66.

E. Passages’ Discovery of Cliffside’s Ownership of The Fix

When Taite created C&S Media, Taite had his attorney, Loren Beck, sign C&S Media’s articles of incorporation. Trial Ex. 117. Pax Prentiss testified that he had previously met Beck and knew that Beck was associated with Taite. 2/26 PM Tr. at 98-99. In September 2014, Prentiss emailed a colleague at Passages stating that Prentiss had entered a Google search for his own name and saw an advertisement for the Passages review on The Fix, but when Prentiss clicked on that link, he was directed to the review of Cliffside Malibu on The Fix instead. Trial Ex. 116. Prentiss did not take any further actions to investigate as to why this might have occurred. 2/26 PM Tr. at 101.

On November 3, 2017, an article was released on a journalistic website called The Verge, which exposed the financial connection between Cliffside and The Fix. See Trial Ex. 2654. Pax Prentiss testified that he did not know about Taite’s ownership of The Fix until the publication of the article on The Verge. 2/19 AM Tr. at 75; 2/26 PM Tr. at 91, 107. Prentiss testified that he “never made any effort to find out who owned The Fix” prior to the publication of the article in The Verge. 2/26 PM Tr. at 100. Shortly after the article was published on The Verge, The Fix added a disclaimer to its websites noting the common ownership with Cliffside Malibu and explaining that some of the older reviews in the Rehab Review section were written by the former editorial team using different criteria. Dkt. 383-1 ¶¶ 27-28.

Passages filed the complaint in this action on February 2, 2018. See Dkt. 1. After litigation commenced, Taite contacted Passages and offered to remove the Passages review in exchange for a release of liability, which Passages rejected. See 2/26 AM Tr. at 18-20.
F. Evidence of Cliffside’s Profits from the Passages Review on The Fix

Between 2014 and 2018, Cliffside paid C&S Media approximately $5 million for banner advertisements for Cliffside Malibu to appear on websites throughout The Fix’s domain. 2/20 AM Tr. at 7; Dkt. 361 ¶ 7; Dkt. 361-2. Taite approved all advertising expenditures and monitored their effectiveness “by feel,” as opposed to relying on analytical data. See 2/20 AM Tr. at 15-16.

From 2014 to 2018, there were 192,434 organic visitors to the Passages review on The Fix, with the term “organic” referring to a visitor who was directed to the Passages review from Google search results, not advertisements. Trial Exs. 1326-1691 (Google analytics showing the number of visitors); Trial Ex. 2749 (spreadsheet prepared by Cliffside compiling the underlying Google analytics data); Dkt. 369 ¶ 7 (describing the meaning of “organic” visitor). The number of visitors to the Passages review page sharply increased following C&S Media’s acquisition of The Fix in October 2013. See Trial Ex. 2749; Dkt. 402 at 7 (Passages’ post-trial brief graphically summarizing the number of visitors to the Passages review page per year). Similarly, Cliffside’s net income increased from approximately $400,000 per year from 2011 to 2013 to over $4 million in 2014, and again to approximately $5.5 million in 2015. See Trial Ex. 1125.3

Since October 2014, according to Google analytics, there were only 793 visitors of The Fix who viewed both the Passages review page and either the About Reviews page featuring the Process Statement or the Terms and Conditions Page. Trial Ex. 2749. After July 2014, only 462 people viewed both the Passages review and the Mission Statement on The Fix. Id.

G. Passages’ Own Unbranded Website Campaign

Drug rehab faces investigations into labor practices and Medicaid fraud

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