SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) – A U.S. District Court grand jury indicted Jamesetta Whipple-Duncan, 58, of Savannah, for her role in providing access to a convicted ‘pill mill’ doctor.
Whipple-Duncan faces charges including Maintaining a Drug-Involved Premises; Solicitation and Receipt of Kickbacks; False Statements in a Loan and Credit Application; Falsification of Records; and False Statements.
The charges carry a possible sentence upon conviction of up to 30 years in prison.
According to court documents and testimony, Whipple-Duncan, was the owner of the now-closed Georgia Laboratory Diagnostics LLC, in Garden City. Whipple-Duncan was also an employer of Dr. Frank Bynes Jr., 69, of Savannah.
Bynes was sentenced in February 2020 to 20 years after being found guilty on 13 counts of Unlawful Dispensation of Controlled Substances and three counts of Health Care Fraud.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the indictment alleges Whipple-Duncan “profited significantly from this clinic, both in the form of cash from many addicted patients and kickbacks paid to Whipple-Duncan from a laboratory that processed the clinic’s urine tests. Whipple-Duncan used the proceeds of the pill mill for her own use and enjoyment; yet, when Whipple-Duncan filed for bankruptcy protections shortly after the pill mill was shut down, Whipple-Duncan concealed the fact (that) she received the pill mill income and kickbacks she received, while making a series of false statements to the United States and others.”
Prosecutors claim Whipple-Duncan and Georgia Diagnostics Laboratory accepted only cash for office visits and refused to accept insurance, requiring Bynes’ patients to pay hundreds of dollars per visit – yet facilitated payments from the patients’ health care benefit programs for prescriptions and lab tests.
The indictment also alleges that Whipple-Duncan solicited and received kickbacks by falsely claiming to be an employee of an Oklahoma laboratory that paid Whipple-Duncan to submit referrals for urine tests that the laboratory then billed to Medicare and Georgia Medicaid for nearly $500,000.
Regarding the financial crimes counts, the indictment alleges that on Sept. 27, 2017, Whipple-Duncan applied for and later received a $75,000 loan from a Savannah-based credit union, claiming income of “$10,000 monthly” from Georgia Diagnostic Laboratory despite knowing that the clinic already had been shut down following the execution of a federal search warrant. Whipple-Duncan later filed for federal bankruptcy protection, claiming that during that same period her income was $13,262 – despite her prior claims of making “$10,000 monthly” from Georgia Diagnostic Laboratory.