SOME USING PHONY MRIS TO GET PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

SOUTH SHORE -- Kentucky's booming illegal prescription drug trade has
spawned a new offshoot: the trade of bogus medical records, including MRIs.

Investigators say the emergence of such counterfeit documents shows the
problem is becoming both more organized and more sophisticated, The
Lexington Herald-Leader reporter in Sunday's editions.

A woman who paid for a phony MRI report, Donna Sue Hurt Webb, said she got
it from a man in a parking lot outside a medical clinic in South Shore. She
was later arrested for using the report to get prescription drugs.

"I don't know who the guy was, but right out in the parking lot, they were
selling MRIs," she said. "There are fake MRIs all over South Shore, I know
that."

Webb said her fake report, which came complete with her name, age and
Social Security number, was convincing enough that over a six-month period,
physicians working at the Tri-State clinic prescribed a variety of pain
pills for her, from Lorcet to Valium.

MRI is an acronym for magnetic resonance imaging, a kind of X-ray that
shows damage to soft tissues. Doctors often use written reports of MRIs,
which generally cost about $2,700 at hospitals and clinics, to diagnose and
treat back injuries or other infirmities, frequently with painkilling
narcotics.

The newspaper also pointed to other evidence of the rise in the bogus MRI
trade:

- -- Webb, of Johnson County, and Michael S. Slone, 39, of Bevinsville in
Floyd County, have been indicted in Greenup County on charges of obtaining
prescriptions by fraud, a Class D felony. Both were using bogus MRIs,
according to the indictments.

- -- Greenup County Sheriff Keith Cooper said officials at Tri-State Health
Clinic in South Shore have referred 52 reports of fake MRIs to him.

- -- A Paintsville hospital official said she had received about 20 reports
that people were manufacturing MRI reports on the hospital's letterhead.

A week after Webb was arrested on July 5, police arrested Slone on the same
charge. A doctor noticed that the MRI reports submitted by both Slone and
his mother were identical, except for the names and birthdays, court
records said.

Slone confessed his report was based on his mother's MRI report, which also
was false, court records said.

Both Slone and Webb were indicted on Sept. 19. Webb is scheduled for trial
Feb. 27, but no trial date has been set for Slone, who has not been served
with an arrest warrant and is considered a fugitive, court officials said.

Cooper, the sheriff, said Tri-State clinic, which opened in 2001 and
charges up to $250 for first-time office visits, is under investigation.
But both he and Commonwealth's Attorney Cliff Duvall said clinic operators
have cooperated with investigators and frequently report suspicious patients.

"We turn them in," said Tri-State office manager Alice Jewett. "We're a
legal business; that's why we're still open."

Jewett is a former employee at a South Shore clinic owned by Dr. David
Procter, who was one of several doctors with ties to South Shore indicted
in recent years on charges of illegally prescribing controlled drugs.

Five physicians have been indicted on state or federal charges that they
illegally prescribed painkillers and other medications at Procter's clinic.

Jewett's mother, Denise Huffman, is listed as the Tri-State clinic's
operator. A former patient of Procter's, Huffman is scheduled to testify in
Procter's trial on April 23, court records show.

Duvall, the prosecutor, said he has not sought additional indictments on
fake MRI charges because the Tri-State clinic has had several temporary
physicians, and he would have trouble contacting them to testify in court.

To Duvall and others, however, the faked reports are evidence that eastern
Kentucky's prescription-drug problems are more organized than the recent
arrests of loosely linked doctors suggests.

"I call it a syndicate," Duvall said. "I believe somebody is paying people
to go into doctors' offices armed with these false medical records."