The Florida Shuffle

The Florida Shuffle is a $2. 3 million fraudulent scam that involves rehab centers in Delray Beach, Florida. It involves fraudulent sober living houses providing drugs to rehabilitating drug addicts. The purpose is to get the addict hooked back on drugs so that they can charge their insurance company for their relapse, etc. As you continue to read on you will learn why these rehab centers exist, how they lure their victims, and you will also learn about the recovery’s most dangerous man Kenny Chatman.

In 2010, former President Barack Obama implemented the Affordable Care Act which required insurance companies to cover substance abuse and to provide treatment for addicts (Martin). In addition, The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) (McDonough) permitted adults under the age of 26 to be covered by their parent’s insurance and allowed multiple drug relapses (Alvarez). With these acts in place, it wasn’t long before the first flop house opened its doors in Delray Beach, Florida. This center opened under the disguise that it was there to treat addicts with a substance abuse problem. They learned that insurance companies were obligated to provide addicts with the treatment they needed to live a sober life. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of lure is, “to draw with a hint of pleasure or gain: attract actively and strongly (Harper). ” Imagine yourself sitting in an AA meeting, and the person sitting next to you asks you, “what’s wrong with you?” you tell her and then the next thing that comes out of her mouth is, “Do you have health insurance?” You answer, “Yes”, and then she starts to tell you about this sober living home that will help you to overcome your addiction. Next thing you know you’re on a flight to a flop house in the city of Delray Beach, Florida. Little did you was that the lady you encountered at the AA meeting was a marketer, body snatcher or junky hunter paid to lure you into your worst nightmare. These individual prey on people they believe are vulnerable, people that are covered with health insurance, and addicts who are in and out of legit halfway houses.

They are searching for victims at convenient stores, coffee shops, AA meetings and motels offering them gym memberships, money, and drugs (Kassie). As you can see, these body snatchers are paid to prey on you and to them, you’re just another junky. Once they have convinced an individual to go to these flophouses, the person is forced to relapse. The overseer of the house sometimes ties down their victims and force them to do drugs, by forcing a needle of heroin in their arm, or a crack pipe shoved into their mouth (Kassie). The women are sold like property and then bought by other flophouses. At these flophouses, women are forced into sex trafficking. The victims of these heinous sex crimes are sold for as little as $20 a day to their sexual abuser (Kassie). Moreover, this is the process of a vicious cycle. This gives the owners of these flophouses the opportunity to charge their insurance company for STD tests, urine tests, pregnancy tests, DNA tests, and allergy tests. For example, let’s do some math, a urine test cost $1,500 a day, multiply it by five times a week which equals up to $7,500 a week. In addition, if a person has six addicts, and a urine test for each addict fives a week, that equals up to $45,000 a week and $2. 3 million dollars or more a year (Kassie). In other words, how many addicts a person has multiplied by how many times each person pees equals a substantial amount of money. They profit from the addictions of others and in return the trying rehabilitating addicts suffer; sometimes ending in death. Above all, many legitimate sober living homes and treatment centers are forced to shut down because unless they are willing to take kickbacks (Kassie).

According to Dictionary. com, kickbacks is a payment made to someone who has facilitated a transaction or appointment, especially illicitly (Merriam-Webster). Basically, kickbacks mean taking a bribe. The owner of these flophouses goes to legitimate sober living home and treatment center owners and offer them a lot of money for their clients to come to their fraudulent place of business (Kassie). Above all, this is causing problems for owners who are genuinely trying to help their clients reintegrate back into society.

Finally, the recovery’s most dangerous man Kenny Chatman. Kenny Chatman was the owner of a treatment center called Reflections Treatment Center and the owner of numerous flophouses. According, to one of his victims, Chatman forced her to prostitute her body for money (Kassie). Also, she recalled him allowing four guys to sexually abuse her body for $20 because she did something he didn’t like. She said that this trauma caused her to want to shoot up so that she could feel numb (Kassie). Kenny Chatman was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison for money laundering, sex trafficking and insurance fraud (Mower and Musgrave). And then, his wife Laura Chatman was sentenced to 4 years for falsifying documents stating that she was the owner of her husband businesses. Her husband was a convicted felon, so he couldn’t operate these sober living homes, and his treatment center (Mower and Musgrave). As a result, Kenny Chatman is paying for the consequences of his actions. In conclusion, the epidemic of this problem is spreading rapidly. Flophouses are popping up across the country. To put an end to all of this, it is up to the people to educate and inform themselves of the things that are happening around them. If you observe something and feel it in your gut that something is not right, call the proper authorities. We as a people can stop the abuse and hurt of others.