Cult News from Rick Ross =BB Scientologists and fraud?
http://www.cultnews.com/index.php/2006/01/26/scientologists-and-fraud/

Cult News from Rick Ross
A news perspective with analysis from cult expert Rick Ross 01.26.06

Scientologists and fraud?
Posted in Scientology at 10:12 am by Rick Ross

Is there something about being a Scientologist that somehow leads professionals to commit so-called "white collar crimes"?

Some chiropractors that shared a common commitment to Scientology, once named the "Cult of Greed" by Time Magazine, have been linked to such crimes in recent news reports.

Markell Boulis focus in fraud case

Scientologist Markell D. Boulis of Pennsylvania, now jailed on drug charges in Georgia, has become a focus in one of the largest health insurance fraud cases in the United States reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The former chiropractor ran something called "Practice Solutions" out of his basement, selling other chiropractors a package of services.

Another Scientologist and chiropractor David Goroway was a defendant in a related federal racketeering lawsuit.

Time Magazine once noted, "Many of the group's followers have been accused of committing financial scams" and called the organization "a hugely profitable global racket."

Scientology has a history of specifically recruiting dentists, doctors and chiropractors through business management companies such as Sterling Management.

Boulis and Goroway were also associated with yet another Scientologist and chiropractor in Florida.

Scientology's new Flag Building in downtown Clearwater

Interestingly, Clearwater, Florida, which is a major hub for the controversial church and is known for its many Scientology-linked building projects and businesses run by Scientologists, now has another distinction.

Clearwater has been cited by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in its annual report as a metro area with one of the highest per capita rates of consumer fraud in the United States.

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Jailed ex-chiropractor targeted in insurance fraud investigation
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06024/643187.stm

Jailed ex-chiropractor targeted in insurance fraud investigation

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

By Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Markell D. Boulis made national news in the 1990s when he paid $200,000 for his freedom in an Atlanta cocaine case so controversial that it prompted Georgia to change its sentencing rules.

Markell D. Boulis

He might soon be in the national spotlight again.

Mr. Boulis, an admitted drug dealer, suspended Pittsburgh chiropractor and founder of the Hemorrhoid Relief Centers of Pittsburgh, is a central figure in one of the largest health insurance fraud cases in the United States.

He and his associates are being investigated by the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. postal inspectors and the IRS for allegedly running schemes to bill insurance companies and government agencies for unnecessary or fictitious chiropractic services.

Mr. Boulis, 45, a gregarious Canonsburg native, is now in a Georgia jail on a drug conviction.

But he and his Houston lawyer have been negotiating a potential guilty plea with the U.S. attorney's office in Columbus, Ohio, where Mr. Boulis is being prosecuted. The U.S. attorney's office in Pittsburgh is supervising a parallel Medicare fraud case against the Hemorrhoid Relief Centers of Pittsburgh, which Mr. Boulis and his wife, Angel Skulos-Boulis, had been trying to expand in Ohio and Maryland.

For years, federal agents have been examining Mr. Boulis' chiropractic-related businesses in Pittsburgh and in south Florida, which offered billing and diagnostic testing services to chiropractors at hotel seminars across the country.

These companies were named by State Farm Insurance in a 2003 federal racketeering lawsuit in Orlando, Fla., alleging that they signed up chiropractors to bilk insurance companies of millions of dollars for bogus nerve tests on their patients.

Mr. Boulis was not a defendant in that case, but David Goroway, his former partner at a company called Practice Mechanix, agreed to a settlement. Another chiropractor also settled, leaving a Florida neurologist as the sole remaining defendant.

Seminar suspicions

Before Mr. Boulis went to jail in 2003, he had been traveling the country as head of Practice Solutions, which he and his wife ran from the basement of their $600,000 house in the Nevillewood golf course community in Collier.

He patterned the company on Practice Mechanix after he and Mr. Goroway split in a dispute over money in early 2001. According to investigators, Mr. Boulis offered chiropractors an $8,000 package of services that promised to increase their collections dramatically by using an extra billing code to charge insurance companies for past treatments, a practice called "back-billing."

Mr. Boulis claimed it was legal -- back-billing is sometimes permitted to correct previous billing errors for treatments that were rendered. But Mr. Boulis, according to investigators, would submit back-bills for every patient in a chiropractor's practice, and usually for treatments that were never provided.

If chiropractors showed an interest, one of Mr. Boulis' dozen consultants would set them up with another Boulis company, National Insurance Auditors, which handled the extra billings. Among his consultants was John Dettmer, a suspended chiropractor who had spent time in federal prison after being convicted of Medicare fraud in Indiana.

Many chiropractors who attended Mr. Boulis' seminars were eager to sign up. One of them, Columbus chiropractor Anthony M. Abbruzzese, pleaded guilty in federal court in Columbus and agreed to help prosecutors. He was rewarded on Thursday with a light sentence of two years' probation.

But other chiropractors raised questions about Mr. Boulis.

One who attended a seminar in San Francisco in 2002 contacted authorities to complain that Practice Solutions was encouraging insurance fraud.

"In my opinion, this is extremely unprofessional and unethical," the chiropractor wrote to Mr. Boulis in April 2002 after he refused to refund her seminar fee.

"It makes us look unethical and it tells the patient that we are doing something wrong. I was absolutely disgusted by the fact that you actually had the guts to tell fellow chiropractors to do something that makes the profession look unethical, unprofessional and is very possibly illegal."

The chiropractor asked not to be identified for this story. But another chiropractor, Thomas Drzemala, leveled similar charges regarding Mr. Goroway and Practice Mechanix in the Orlando lawsuit.

Federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh and Ohio would not discuss the case publicly, but Mr. Boulis' lawyer, Richard Jaffe, confirmed that his client is under investigation. He would not discuss the case in detail.

According to a civil forfeiture filing in Columbus, federal agents on Feb. 24, 2004, raided the home of Mr. Boulis and his wife and seized $95,052, which prosecutors said was the illegal proceeds of insurance fraud.

The role of Ms. Skulos-Boulis is unclear. But she traveled with her husband to his seminars and later handled the billing for the hemorrhoid clinics in Robinson, Ross, Monroeville, Moon and Upper St. Clair. The Boulises' former lawyer, Anthony Mariani, has filed motions to get back the seized money, saying agents didn't have probable cause to take it.

Ms. Skulos-Boulis did not return calls seeking comment. Mr. Mariani recently became a judge, but before he did he said in court papers that Ms. Skulos-Boulis had no knowledge of fraud.

The forfeiture is on hold while the investigations continue.

Years of legal trouble

Mr. Boulis, the son of hard-working Greek immigrants who ran a Canonsburg candy store, has had problems with drugs, money and the law his entire adult life. His criminal record includes a 1986 forgery and records-tampering conviction while he was a student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and cocaine arrests in Atlanta and Cleveland.

Court documents also show a variety of legal judgments against him. They include orders to pay $90,169 to the IRS for failing to pay income taxes, $12,011 to the IRS for defaulting on a student loan and $157,982 to the nonprofit School House Partners.

Mr. Boulis' most recent venture was the incorporation four years ago of the Hemorrhoid Relief Centers, which has its main office on Fort Couch Road in Upper St. Clair and advertises under the slogan "You'll feel better in the end."

When the company was formed, Ms. Skulos-Boulis was listed as owner and Mr. Boulis as president. Since Mr. Boulis went to prison in 2003, state records have been updated to list only his wife.

The company has had its share of legal problems, too. The landlord of the Fort Couch Road office sued for more than $10,000 in unpaid rent. The hemorrhoid center also owes more than $51,000 in unpaid advertising bills to media companies in Baltimore, according to lawsuits in Common Pleas Court.

Ms. Skulos-Boulis' lawyer in those cases, Gary Scoulos, refused to comment. Finances aside, the Boulises have more immediate problems in Georgia, where Mr. Boulis first got into trouble as a student at Life University near Atlanta. Just before he got his chiropractic license in 1991, he was arrested in Cobb County, Ga., on charges of trying to sell cocaine. A jury found him guilty of possession in 1993, and he was sentenced to five years in prison, 25 years of probation and a $50,000 fine.

Mr. Boulis petitioned the court under Georgia's Probation for First Time Offender Act and got his sentence reduced to a year in jail, 25 years of probation and $150,000 in cash. "It was my cocaine," he admitted in court. "I purchased it, and I was going to distribute it."

His jail term was later eliminated after he made a $200,000 "donation" to the Marietta-Cobb-Smyrna Narcotics Unit. The probationary term remained. After handing over the check, Mr. Boulis drove back to Pennsylvania in his Mercedes. The deal caused such outrage in Georgia that it led to a change in state sentencing rules so that similar first-time offenders could no longer buy their way out of jail.

Mr. Boulis told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he was desperate to keep his Pennsylvania chiropractic license, so he approached "at least 50 lawyers" before he found one who was politically connected enough to help him cut a deal.

After the story broke in the Atlanta paper, Ms. Skulos-Boulis accused the district attorney's office of reneging on a promise to seal the case so her husband could retain his license. He finally lost his license in 1997 after spending five years as a chiropractor at several locations in the Pittsburgh area and West Virginia.

No longer able to practice, Mr. Boulis then joined up with Mr. Goroway and Brad Goldstein, owner of Premier Medical Group, in Florida. The three had met at Life University and were members of the Church of Scientology.

Mr. Boulis made a good living in those years. He traveled constantly for business and took his family on vacation every year to Greece, where his mother-in-law has a house.

But the Georgia drug case came back to haunt him.

In 2003, when Mr. Boulis was in Ohio to establish a new hemorrhoid clinic, Cleveland police said he tried to buy cocaine. That arrest meant he had violated his probation in Georgia, so a judge in Atlanta sent him to prison for seven years.

Ms. Skulos-Boulis again blasted Cobb County officials.

"They said if we paid this $200,000 to Cobb County, my husband will be allowed to keep his license and that they would seal the case so the media would not find out and that he would receive alcohol and drug counseling," she told the Atlanta paper. "They essentially took the money and ran."

Now, three years later, there's yet another twist in the case. Mr. Boulis has been asking for a new trial in Georgia, arguing that the get-out-of-jail deal he pursued in 1993 was illegal to begin with.

His Atlanta lawyer, Brian Steele, didn't return a call. But in court papers filed in Cobb County, Mr. Steele asked that the conviction be voided.

And Mr. Boulis wants his $200,000 back, too.

"This money was not a fine, restitution, forfeiture or other legal sentence imposed upon defendant," his lawyer wrote. "It was simply a payoff to the local police department, which cannot be tolerated in our system of justice."

(Torsten Ove can be reached at tove@post-gazette.com or 412 263-1652.)

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