Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Suspended Licenses for Scam Chiropractors Watts (Wildberg?)

I have a friend on Facebook who posts when "a good thing happened today," which is an important thing to do in this age of hell in a handbasket.

Well, yesterday I was informed that my complaint to the Minnesota attorney general and the Board of Chiropractic Examiners against fraudulent chiropractors Bradley Watts and Kristen Watts (possibly aka Bradley and Kristen Wildberg or Kris or Kristan or Kristin Wildberg) were upheld and their licenses to practice in Minnesota have been suspended. It took a while, but it's done.


The finding is in legal language, of course, but after a July 2017 conference with the state board and someone from the attorney general's office (and the the Watts's attorneys), we now have these findings:

  1. Their clinic advertised a misleading cure for Type II diabetes. They took large payments, "sometimes in excess of $7,500" to participate in their program.
  2. They said they would submit insurance claims for patients but did not.
  3. They recommended supplements and ordered lab tests without doing physical exams.
  4. They took advance payments without following required rules for prepayment.
All of that violates some state statues (cited in the finding) and justifies these disciplinary actions:
  1. Their licenses are suspended for not less than four years starting April 11, 2019. (There's a lot of complicated language about how the suspension is stayed if they pay for and pass two consecutive ethics courses [!] with high grades and pay for and pass a practitioner competency exam in chiropractic.)
  2. When the four years of suspension are up or if they complete those courses before the time is up, they have to notify the board of resumption of practice, and then after that they have to submit a sample of their patient records every six months (and the board can do random selection of records), prove that they are handling prepayments correctly, submit all insurance claims in a timely manner, and have all of their advertising preapproved by the board.
  3. They have to pay a civil penalty of $7,500 each to the board if they ever want their licenses back.
If they do all of that, the board may or may not reinstate their unrestricted licenses completely after four years. It's a bit unclear to me whether they have to apply for reinstatement of the unrestricted license once the four years are up, or if it happens automatically if they've completed all the steps above. And of course, all of this is civil and not criminal.

It doesn't mention their possible use of aliases: what are their real names, state of Minnesota? How can their be two couples names Bradley and Kristen W. using the same exact address in Edina? Do you even know? And if they are aliases, how did they come to have a "medical" license under two different names? And what about the Watts's overt scams in Colorado, and the Wildberg's scams in Wisconsin and Michigan?

I guess Minnesota wanted to stick to acts carried out in Minnesota that clearly violated the chiropractic code of conduct. And that is something to be glad about, even though it's not enough.

___

If you want to read the Stipulation and Order yourself, go to this page and enter Watts as the last name. The two findings are identical except for the two peoples' names and the dates of their original licensing.

_____

My past posts about these reprehensible people:

Cure diabetes now! (March 2014)

Brad Wildberg's diabetes "cure" (March 2014)

Free dinner for diabetics: prelude to a ripoff? (September 2015)

1 comment:

George said...

I'm very familiar with these two and I'm wondering if the actions or lawsuit involved class action? Were they required to make restitution, etc.?

Thanks.