Agent who started drug rehab investigation and his ‘Oh my God’ moment
On its face, the complaint looked no more extraordinary than the other 16,000 cases the
But the more he dug into it, the more his eyes widened, and today, that complaint has spawned a billion-dollar insurance fraud investigation into the county's lucrative drug treatment industry.
Griffin spoke publicly for the first time about the origins of an investigation that is looming over the county's fourth largest industry, but he couldn't say too much for fear of jeopardizing the cases.
What he could say is he now has nothing to do with the investigation he started.
In April, he says, his boss at the state
Griffin, who was based in
Biggest insurance fraud case
in
"I'm still confused why somebody would shoot themselves in the foot on something this big and this bold," he said. "I think that's pretty safe to say that it's scheduled to be the largest (insurance fraud) case in the history of the state of
Although Griffin was its brainchild, his departure shouldn't jeopardize the investigation, he said, because the
Still, it's a bitter ending for someone who came out of retirement to work insurance fraud after 25 years of headline-grabbing arrests at the
"Honestly, dumb luck -- I stumbled across this stupid case," he said. "Little did I realize the kind of greed and controversy I'd stir within my own office."
In his
"Over the past few months, it has been made increasingly clear that it was the intentions of some within my chain of command to remove me at any cost from the
A spokeswoman for Atwater, who oversees the Insurance Fraud Division, declined to answer questions about why Griffin was removed. She said, "This employee has made many claims that are false" but didn't elaborate.
Griffin's most recent evaluations were glowing, with above-average marks overall. In his evaluation approved in February, his supervisor wrote of his valuable role on the task force.
"At every meeting I attend at the
The
That all changed when he got his first call from Griffin.
"When you think straight shooter, that's this guy," Lehman said. "This is his thing, and he gets very frustrated by the politics."
Restless after 25 years
with sheriff's office
Before he joined the
He and a partner once donned
He retired in 2010, but quickly grew restless, and when he saw an open investigator's position at the local office of the
In his new role, he was handled complaints of insurance fraud. Most never pan out. In five years since Griffin started, the division's insurance fraud complaints have grown to more than 17,000 in the 2014-15 fiscal year. About 1,300 -- 7.6 percent -- resulted in an arrest.
The complaint that would lead to the biggest case of his career started the same way.
"It started off as a simple case, no big deal," he said. "As I kept looking deeper and deeper into it, it started getting bigger and bigger and it's like, 'Oh my God.'"
He would not give more details but did say it was against a sober industry provider.
Once it was clear he was looking at tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks and bribes -- and growing -- he realized that it was too big for the state agency.
"Honestly, the state did not have the resources or the manpower to run with it," he said. "We're a 20-man office out of West Palm. I knew there was no way that we could handle this ourselves."
He and his then-lieutenant went to the local
"I've worked with a lot of
In
Then, in December, the
Despite the raids, no arrests have been made and no indictments have gone public.
Find a case, 'put a bow
on it and we'll prosecute'
Lehman said he and others in the recovery industry had seen years ago that it was ripe with corruption, with allegations of fraudulent insurance claims, patient brokering and kickbacks, but his efforts to get local authorities interested in going after the bad operators went nowhere.
Lehman recalled pressing for action in a 2014 meeting with State Attorney
"We told him there is a lot of patient brokering going on and we tried to describe the moving pieces at that time," he said. "Aronberg cuts us off and says, 'I'm not sure I see the crime here,' and his staff says, 'Really?'"
He said Aronberg told him, "Let's say there is a crime.You boys need to find a law enforcement agency that has jurisdictional authority to cross over county lines. You need to go to the state and when you get one of those organizations to pursue a case and put a bow on it and deliver it to us, then we'll prosecute to the fullest extent of the law."
After that meeting, "We know we're not going to get anyone in
When asked to discuss the meeting, Aronberg spokesman
"That is the industry's argument, that there are existing laws on the books that could be used to regulate or prosecute any entity that is breaking the law," Edmondson said. "I think the answer to that is, show me where in the state of
He added, "Statutes that are on the books for certain conduct, I think arguably, never anticipated what is going on now."
After the
Last week, Lehman met with Aronberg and one of his chief assistants,
"Having met with chief assistant state attorney
Griffin on the ball
immediately
But Lehman's conclusion that no one locally would go after questionable sober home operators proved wrong. A few months after meeting with Aronberg, Lehman got a surprise call from Griffin.
"He said, 'I understand you've been looking to talk to me. My name is
After that, Lehman and his organization, which receives complaints of all kinds about questionable sober home operators, began funneling information to Griffin and investigators.
Griffin called Lehman an "asset to the task force."
"He's in a position where a lot of people around the country send their kids down here and don't know who to contact (for complaints)," he said. "So they go to the drug rehabilitation industry group and that's FARR."
Lehman knew which tips were valid enough to forward to Griffin, and those went straight up to the
More than 40 state and federal agents are assigned to fraud cases involving the drug rehab industry, Griffin said, and more agencies have been trying to get in on the action.
"Two and a half years ago, nobody cared," he said. "Now? I get calls all the time from people wanting to get involved in this."
He said it was the biggest case of his career, when measured in either dollars or the number of people affected.
"This thing is actually affecting tens of thousands of young people who are in recovery and their families, plus it's a billion dollars worth of false insurance claims," he said. "It would not be hard to articulate this affecting hundreds of thousands of people."
He said the bad operators are affecting everyone -- and killing people.
"This case, they're crippling society. They're making insurance premiums go up," he said. "God almighty, they're dying."
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