Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, Kenny Chapman catapults from personal

trainer to mogul, running a drug treatment business.

He made a massive amount of money. We're talking millions of dollars.

But something isn't right.

Chapman seems to have made it far too big, too fast.

When you go from making five to six figures, one year to making $10 million

the next year, that's an indicator.

These are things that we look for when we're doing investigations.

And Chapman's halfway houses, or sober homes, are anything but sober.

Drug use was rampant at the sober homes. We know that Chapman himself directly

provided the drug to keep people high.

And beyond the drugs...

Chapman further exploits some of his female clients.

He was able to twist these women into becoming prostitutes for him.

You know, he became a pimp.

Kenny Chapman hauls in more than $16 million off the backs of vulnerable

clients.

Kenny Chapman saw a chance to make a lot of money and didn't care who he hurt to

make that happen.

It wasn't like, you know, he's a really bad guy.

It was like the devil himself had walked in this room.

It's September 2015.

And Kenny Chapman is living large.

He buys a million -dollar mansion in Boynton Beach, Florida.

All off the proceeds of his booming drug rehab business.

He's making his fortune by seemingly getting people off of drugs.

I started using... Like these patients.

who agreed to appear in this promotional video for Kenny Chapman's clinic called

Reflections Treatment Center.

He's never, never, ever turned his back on me, never.

The owner, Kenny Chapman, has really helped me through a lot.

I've known him for two years before the treatment center was even established.

And, I mean, I call him at two in the morning, he picks me up.

Chapman certainly has some people singing his praises.

But are his clients really getting clean?

Kenny Chapman's facilities had the reputation that you could use drugs.

were available.

There were just certain requirements about attending treatment so that they

could bill the client's insurance.

Kenny Chapman's road to riches starts modestly as a fitness instructor.

But the married father of four also has a growing side business.

He's operating several halfway houses, also known as sober homes.

As the name implies, sober homes are domiciles where recovering addicts live

together and are supposed to help each other stay clean.

There are usually strict curfews. There's a house manager usually who

that everybody's staying clean and sober.

There's some neighborhoods where you have a half dozen sober homes there. The

good ones you won't even notice.

And opening a sober home is easy.

There was no lights and things, no requirements to open a sober home.

So you can go down any residential street in South Florida and take a three

-bedroom, two -bedroom house.

Open it today as a sober home.

While living at a legitimate sober home, patients should receive outpatient care

at a licensed treatment center.

Treatment is administered by a healthcare professional and includes

therapy and one -on -one counseling.

But with Kenny Chapman's sober homes and the treatment centers he works with,

a different rehab model is in play.

With Penny's Places, people knew that they could go there and get high, and

did not have to be sober. I mean, he was preying on these people's addictions

and profiting off of it.

Chapman profits by cutting deals with shady treatment centers.

He started partnering with these treatment centers.

and basically selling his insured patients to the treatment centers. And

the treatment center collected money from the billings that Kenny Chapman

generated, the treatment centers would pay money back to Kenny.

A fraudulent treatment center could be a money -making bonanza, providing

limited actual services coupled with enormous billing, covered by insurance.

The supposed services provided, the therapy sessions, the doctor's visits,

kind of thing, those were billable services.

So if you get a lot of kids in the room and you have this three -hour session,

or at least you billed a three -hour session, you're talking $40 ,000 to $50

,000 in bills just for that therapy session on that single day.

Crooked treatment centers also make huge profits.

Overbilling for urinalysis drug testing.

You're taking a $3 cup and turning it into thousands of dollars in fraudulent

billing. I mean, that's more than the markup on crack cocaine.

Kenny Chapman does the math.

Why settle for just the kickbacks if you can get in on the action, too?

He decides to expand his business and open his own treatment center.

But Chapman faces obstacles.

He has no qualifications.

And he's got a prior conviction for credit card fraud.

The important thing about that was that it prohibited him from being involved in

the substance abuse treatment center as an owner, as anybody who had contact

with patients.

But Chapman cleverly buries his past by putting the business in the name of his

wife, Laura, who was seen with him in this photo from a treatment center

directory.

Then he finds physicians willing to sign on as staff professionals.

To open a treatment center, you need to have a medical director and a clinical

director. And he was able to find people to do that early on.

Some of these doctors at the beginning, I don't think knew what they were

getting into.

And so in January 2014,

Laura Chatman opens Reflections Treatment Center in Margate, Florida.

But Laura's involvement is in name only.

Reflections is Kenny's baby.

And he gets busy sending his sober home tenants to Reflections.

for his brand of drug treatment and sky -high insurance claims.

That's the whole thing, is you don't make any money if these people don't

insurance. And the better the insurance plan, the more money you make off of it.

But if their insurance starts to run out, Chapman's Treatment Center,

Reflections, offers a sinister kind of fix.

He actually would encourage relapses. That would allow reflections to call the

insurance company and say, Joey relapsed on heroin.

We need to continue to treat him. And that might allow them to get two more

weeks or a month more of approved treatment.

A relapse can be worth tens of thousands in additional billing.

And to attract new clients,

Chapman mirrors the legitimate treatment industry with evocative advertising,

as seen here on his website.

You'd see these beautiful websites.

You'd see these wonderful pictures of sunsets, people riding horses, beaches.

You'd see well -written phrases about recovery and addictions of disease. And

turns out that these websites are just con jobs.

Jerry and Victoria Smith know the heartache of drug abuse and false

Their son Skyler battles heroin addiction.

Skyler grows up in the Northeast, the older of two sons.

Everybody who knew him said, what a bright kid. He was involved in so many

things. He loved sports. He was on t -ball, baseball.

He started playing piano at the second grade.

He could remember pages and pages of classical music without even really

studying it.

There was a lot of great sides to Schuyler.

At 16, Schuyler gets a part -time job, working with older kids, and things

start to change.

We were actually very excited because he got a great job for the summer at a

local resort. He was a busboy, and he made a lot of money.

But the other side of that was a lot of these college kids would stay out late

and party.

We started seeing that he was maybe drinking, and then substances started to

come in. I would notice something.

crunched up or cracked up on a mirror in his room like he was snorting

something.

We're realizing that there's drugs involved and we can't help him.

After high school, Skyler's drug abuse progresses to heroin.

He stole our car.

He was losing weight, things like that. His looks were changing.

And our world was crumbling and falling apart at that point.

I can tell you times where I was under the table crying because my son called

up. He was high somewhere and I couldn't do anything.

And there were times that I was driving in the middle of the night trying to

find him.

Local rehab fails.

And after meeting with therapists, the Smiths decide to send Skyler to Florida

for drug treatment.

I was so naive. I actually packed him Ralph Lauren shirts and the shorts and,

you know, khakis. I even sent a tie with him. Maybe he'll wear it to one of the

meetings there, you know.

And so we thought this was going to be sort of like a one and done, send him

down there.

He's going to recover in a spa -like setting.

And this is the magic bullet.

But the Smiths learn the cruel truth.

There is no magic bullet.

Especially when your son gets caught up with Kenny Chapman.

Next on American Greed, Kenny Chapman's business is booming, but the

actual treatment is a sham.

Patients clearly being high, not being able to just go through the motions of

the treatment sessions.

In southeast Florida, Kenny Chapman is busy filling his rehab facilities with

addicts struggling to get off drugs.

Like Skyler Smith from Philadelphia.

When you have a child in the active throes of addiction, you no longer have

son.

Near Columbus, Ohio, Michelle Curran also lives a parent's nightmare.

Her daughter, Micaiah, is addicted to heroin.

When I first learned that she had a problem, you're so scared for them,

So your mind's going 100 miles an hour.

You don't know what to do.

You don't know where to turn.

You want to be able to fix it. I could fix everything for her when she was

little, and I couldn't fix it.

And that's hard.

That's hard.

At age 15, Micaiah is prescribed opiates after she has an operation to remove a

cyst from her lower back.

The pain was just intense.

So she was on Vicodin probably for three weeks or so.

I can remember this, them saying that she could take two at a time every four

hours, which for a 15 -year -old, that's a lot.

Micaiah recovers from the surgery.

and moves on with her active young life.

She was actually considered gifted, and Micaiah actually attended college while

she was in high school to give her that challenge.

She got very bored in high school.

By age 20, Micaiah has two sons.

She loves her boys, but her second pregnancy aggravates that pain in her

back.

McKay would just describe it as this terrible, terrible pain.

And the further she got along in her pregnancy, the worse it seemed to get.

The young mother struggles with chronic discomfort.

She was taking pain pills, so your Vicodin, your Percocet.

She was taking more and more.

You know, you get used to that, whatever dose it would be.

And at some point, your body needs something stronger.

someone actually shot her up with heroin and said, this will take it away.

And it was, from there on, it was downhill.

Michelle takes custody of her grandsons and sends her daughter to Florida to get

clean and sober.

After relapsing, her mother says Micaiah is making progress at a legitimate

treatment center and sober home.

Things are looking up.

Until one day after a sobriety meeting, Micaiah gets a tempting offer.

A girl was there and said that, hey, if you come live here, all you have to do

is go find people to live here and they'll pay you like $300 a week.

Really laid back. It's pretty cool.

Micaiah falls for the pitch.

She enrolls at Chapman's Treatment Center and moves into one of his sober

That's a bad choice for an addict like her, struggling with sobriety.

They're in a very delicate place because, you know, every day, every

their life, they're hearing this voice in their head that's telling them to use

drugs, use drugs, use drugs. But when you have somebody that's sleeping in the

bed next to you using drugs, you have almost no chance of resisting.

And the supposed treatment at Reflections is spotty at best.

And often, it's non -existent.

She wasn't having the therapy sessions like she should have been. They weren't

getting to the root cause of her addiction.

Instead, they were just feeding the addiction and using her because she had

insurance.

We talked to insiders that described patients as nodding off, patients

being high, intoxicated, not being able to just go through the motions of the

treatment sessions.

In fact, the treatment at Reflections is most effective in just one area,

billing.

Chapman's corrupt physicians write standing orders for treatment.

lending the appearance of legitimacy to those massive bills.

Without that doctor's signature, that test doesn't happen. The insurance bill

isn't submitted, the insurance bill isn't claimed, and nobody involved gets

kickbacks that they were promised.

Chapman is making more than $100 ,000 a week.

He and his wife, Laura, buy a mansion in Boynton Beach, Florida.

and portray themselves in promotional materials as models of success.

He and his wife cultivated a lifestyle and made millions of

dollars. They had beautiful homes, cars, jewelry, vacation. They had a beautiful

lifestyle all off the backs of our children, our loved ones.

Next on American Greed, Kenny Chapman consoles worried parents that their

addicted children are safe with him.

People who are taking drugs lie.

But you never think that the therapists and the administrators of these places

are lying.

For Kenny Chapman, the money from his bogus drug treatment business is pouring

in.

To keep his scam operating and growing, all he needs is more

bodies with insurance.

And to attract new addicts, Chapman solicits the service of agents known as

brokers.

That's how Kinney lured Micaiah Fike into his operation.

These recruiters or body brokers would literally drive up and down the streets

of cities like Delray Beach looking for young people who might have suitcases or

bags and looking for a place to stay.

And they would approach them and recruit them with promises of little or no

rent, free cigarettes, you just come stay at my house.

If the answer is yes, the next question is, what kind of insurance do you have?

What the body broker will do is they'll get on the phone with the sober home or

the treatment center. They'll say, I got a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan number

123.

They'll get a call back saying the plan is approved, and they'll bring the

patient into the facility, and they'll get their kickback.

Patients recruited to Chapman facilities soon learn that lax rules and free

stuff come with strings attached.

This includes being subjected to Chapman's cruel authority.

What Kenny Chapman liked to do was completely alienate a client from

their friends and family, anyone that might actually help them or support

So he confiscated their cell phones, their car keys.

They had seen him physically throw male clients out of the house.

One of his tactics was to get face -to -face, right in there, nose -to -nose,

and tell you the things that he could do to you.

When concerned parents call, Chapman pours on the charm and feigns that all

well.

Kenny Chapman will get on the phone and convince the parents that the kids were

liars and that the kids will benefit from treatment, that this is just

stage in the process.

People in recovery lie.

People who are taking drugs lie.

But you never think that the therapists and the administrators of these places

are lying.

And part of Chapman's con, as seen in these photos from the Reflections

is that he's also a positive role model and a pillar of the community.

He started this PR campaign to make himself look legitimate.

He would donate $1 ,000 to some charity and have somebody write a press release

and send it out to news organizations or put it on their websites.

To this end, Chapman gets former NBA basketball star Keon Dooling to plug

Reflections, as he does here in this promotional video.

Today I am here at the wonderful facility called Reflections.

It is a treatment center extraordinary to the 10th power.

American Greed reached out to Mr. Dooling for comment but received no

It appears that Keon Dooling is just another mark in the Chapman racket.

Chapman's enterprise is extensive.

With a half dozen sober homes and his Reflections Treatment Center, he runs it

all with an iron fist to the point of playing doctor.

Mr. Chapman was at the treatment facility every single day. He was in

meeting. If, for example, a clinical director recommended that a patient be

transferred to an inpatient detox facility, Mr. Chapman would overrule

what he decided went.

as law there.

He did hold their medications, and from what we've seen, it's literally like

having someone's life in your hands because you're controlling their

you're controlling their recovery.

Next on American Greed, Kenny Chapman's exploitation of his clients

hits a new low.

He was able to twist these women into becoming prostitutes for him.

You know, he became a pimp.

In South Florida, Kenny Chapman's drug rehab empire is thriving.

But there are cracks in the facade.

Patients aren't recovering.

21 -year -old Skyler Smith is battling a heroin addiction while living a

tortured existence at Kenny Chapman's facilities.

He's a thousand miles away from his family in Philadelphia when his mother,

Victoria, gets a call.

Unfortunately, in my world, a phone call from Florida is like that PTSD moment,

okay? Because nothing good comes from these phone calls, usually.

The call is from a young woman in recovery.

She goes, I just escaped from Kenny Chapman's sober home.

He locks the windows. He locks the doors. He bolts everything shut. He

cell phones.

I'm calling because Skyler wouldn't come with me. He didn't want to be homeless.

They're feeding him drugs. I'm afraid he's going to overdose and die there.

You've got to get him out of this house.

Frantic, Victoria flies to Florida to retrieve her son.

And Kenny Chapman is nowhere to be found.

I arrived down to Florida on a Wednesday and picked Skyler up at Reflections at

9 a .m. I was so relieved to see him. He was alive.

And he looked rough.

He certainly wasn't the beautiful boy that just graduated from high school.

And he's clearly high.

The Smith sends Skyler to a legitimate treatment center in Utah.

Believing that Kenny Chapman is out of their lives for good.

Months later, Skyler is clean.

But his addiction is still strong.

And so is the lure of Florida.

He's like, I think I have to go back to Florida to recover. That's where I need

to recover.

Skyler falters and calls Kenny Chapman. I think he wanted to use again.

All right. Because that addiction was still there. I mean, unless you have a

good solid maybe year or two, you're still in that danger zone. And that

is still strong.

Chapman buys a plane ticket for Skyler and flies him back to Florida and into

the Chapman system.

Within days, Skyler is using heroin again.

Months pass.

Until a broker finally sends him to detox where he's plied with medication.

Things only get worse.

And it's been substantiated now through doctors and reports

that they over -medicated our son with a cocktail of dangerous

medications.

Skyler flees detox, dazed and confused from the combination of meds.

Oh, it's a catastrophe.

If you get the wrong meds, if you have someone that's mentally unstable, you

push them over the edge.

They can end up back on the street seeking out street narcotics. I mean,

danger is that they end up dead.

One day later, Skyler is arrested, charged with robbing a business.

He's sent to jail in Okeechobee, Florida, while the investigation

The collateral damage that has been done by Kenny Chapman and

the other facilities in Florida to the parents, to the siblings, is

insurmountable.

Kenny Chapman is at the height of his depraved success.

And he's exploiting some of his female clients in a new way, through the

oldest profession.

These are girls who are 18 to 22, 23 years old. They're addicted

to drugs.

They've already been abused.

by the system, by becoming addicts and going through everything that that

involved. And they're trying to get better. And instead, he saw a way to use

them and their bodies to make money.

Some of the women are moved to a female -only sober home north of Palm Beach.

Eventually, he kept these women captive in a home and would have the men come

to the home and rape them.

And keep them high while doing it.

Then, in April 2015, a turning point.

A young woman escapes Chapman's brothel and divulges everything to local law

enforcement and the FBI.

She relayed to us that while she was in Kenny Chapman's care, she was actually

confined to the house, kept high on drugs, and...

She was forced to engage in prostitution with unknown male individuals who were

brought over.

I interviewed several women who had escaped from him and were deathly

of him. He had a psychological hold on these women, which was truly sinister.

By now, the opioid and rehab crisis is spilling out all over South Florida.

in fraud amounts, but we also saw the number of overdoses that were happening

associated with these quote -unquote sober homes.

We realized we had an epidemic in our own backyard that we had to address.

The FBI launches a wide investigation, and one name keeps popping up.

It was startling how many individuals we were talking to would say, what are you

guys doing about Kenny Chavin?

Next, Kenny Chapman's greed has tragic consequences.

We received a call from the Boynton Police Department, and I knew.

I knew what happened.

In South Florida, Kenny Chapman and his drug rehab business draw the attention

of law enforcement and the media.

Journalist Lawrence Maurer does extensive reporting on Kenny Chapman.

It was not hard to find people who had their own horror stories of dealing with

Kenny Chapman who felt that the guy was a psychopath.

I had a probe of police records on this guy.

More than 100 pages of police reports.

An incident in South Florida where he had stolen people's cell phones.

All kinds of trouble going on in the sober homes.

Welcome to Reflections Treatment Center. We're located in... Chapman is

notorious for putting forth an impressive facade.

Outwardly, everything seems legitimate, as shown in this video from the

Reflections website.

But we also believe very much in healing the mind, body, and the spirit.

Dr. Barry Gregory is Reflections' clinical director.

He touts the holistic care offered at Reflections.

We really believe that our job is to save lives, and frankly, that's what

doing.

And as for Chapman's satisfied clients, appearing in this Reflections video, not

all may be as it seems.

Staff, everybody is friendly and, you know, it's more like a family. They

help you as much as they can.

We interviewed several clients who confirmed that that was them in the

testimonial videos and they were high at the time.

Concerned parents are discovering the truth about Chapman's facilities, that

treatment is poor and their loved ones are in danger.

They're giving you drugs to keep you high.

Took all of her meds.

Took her phone.

Stealing her things.

Having them lie to us.

Nobody would talk to me.

If I need to talk to the owner, I want to talk to who's running the house.

Michelle Curran is worried that her daughter, Micaiah, has relapsed.

Her repeated calls to reflections are either unanswered or dismissed.

Michelle's fears are justified.

Micaiah is using heroin again.

In July of 2016, Micaiah and a boyfriend are suddenly evicted from a Chapman

sober home.

While still high, they're dumped at a seedy motel.

It's in a really bad part of town, and just dropped him off there.

and told them they were on their own, basically, at like 2 or 3 in the

Micaiah shoots up again, unaware that the heroin is laced with carfentanil, an

extremely powerful sedative.

The following night, Michelle and her husband, Chuck, are awakened by

deputies and a victim's advocate at their home in Ohio.

He said, We received a call from the Boynton Police Department, and I knew.

I knew what happened. And they said, your daughter was found in a motel,

and she's passed away, and Chuck and I just lost it. I mean,

that was awful.

I remember it like it was last night.

It's hard because you don't ever want to hear that.

that your child is gone.

Micaiah Fyke leaves behind grieving friends, parents, and two young boys.

Her death is not the first fatality linked to Kenny Chapman, nor will it be

last.

Three months later...

24 -year -old Allison Flory dies from a heroin overdose inside a Chapman sober

home.

And at that point, we decided all the FBI task force resources would now be

poured into the Kenny Chapman investigation.

To build their case, investigators have to follow the money.

We got the court orders to get the patient medical records and the paper

And what we started to find was, The evidence of Kenny Chapman's crimes were

right there in the patient files.

When an employee of Reflections Treatment Center provides their own

different patient and there's a claim submitted under that patient, that right

there is fraud 101.

Next on American Greed, law enforcement takes down Kenny Chapman and his corrupt

empire.

The case was extensive.

I mean, they had him dead to rights.

By December 2016, at least five overdose deaths have been linked to Kenny

Chapman and his drug treatment facilities.

After building a strong case against him, law enforcement moves in.

In one operation, we had multiple arrests and search warrants. We arrested

only Mr. Chapman, but a lot of associates, sober home managers, a

employees that he had.

Investigators find shocking evidence of Chapman's negligence.

We found evidence that further supported not only the healthcare fraud, but also

the human trafficking portion of the case. We found patients prescribed

medications that were locked up in safes controlled by Kenny Chapman. We found

evidence of unnecessary testing that was being done that can be billed at a high

amount. There were dozens of...

Private insurance companies that were defrauded, and the largest victims were

the largest insurance companies, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, United Health,

etc.

The fraud totals more than $16 million.

And beyond the money, there are the broken lives.

Repeated stories of struggling addicts who failed to receive even remotely

adequate treatment.

The case was extensive.

I mean, they had him dead to rights.

They had him trafficking women.

They had him cheating on these drug tests.

They had former employees who were cooperating with them against Kenny.

doctors knowingly falsifying records.

I mean, they had him.

Kenny Chapman faces a possible life sentence.

To avoid a trial, Chapman pleads guilty to health care fraud.

money laundering, and sex trafficking.

He believes he's facing a maximum of 15 years in prison.

At the sentencing hearing, emotions run high.

The hearing was difficult to sit through. It was an emotional hearing for

of the families, for pretty much everyone in the courtroom.

It was very powerful.

Kenny Chapman enters the courtroom in shackles and is seated near the family.

We finally get into the courtroom.

Doors close.

Kenny Chapman comes out.

It wasn't like, you know, he's a really bad guy.

It was like the devil himself had walked in this room.

The judge allows victim impact statements from a procession of grieving

members and victims.

The president were parents and family members of young people that died in

Chapman's care, and they were overcome with emotion to where they couldn't even

speak. But some that were very angry spoke directly to him with rage, really,

that, you know, he treated their kids in this manner.

A young man in handcuffs, Skyler Smith, reads a letter to the judge.

Skyler has been accused of robbery after getting brokered to a detox center.

And then out of my son's mouth comes these words about how he was treated,

the fact that he had his medication taken away from him, about the fact that

they were given drugs, that he had no food.

They'd lock him out of the house.

And at the end of my son's talk to the judge, he turns and he says, you know,

this guy has blood on his hands. And I am here to be a testimony to the people

who died and to the women that were raped that this guy did it.

And Kenny is sitting there in his blue jumpsuit, hands and ankles shackled,

staring straight ahead, completely emotionless.

The victim's statements are persuasive.

The judge responds by handing Kenny Chapman an additional 12 plus years.

A 27 and a half year sentence in federal prison with no chance for

parole.

Kenny's wife, Laura Chapman, also appears in court.

Through sobs of apology, Laura pleads guilty to making false statements in

establishing the business.

She is sentenced to three years in prison.

As for Chapman's other accomplices, the crooked doctors, sober home managers,

and body brokers, they get sentences ranging from 18 months to 10 years.

We charged and convicted seven individuals in addition to Mr. Chapman.

American Greed contacted Chapman's attorney.

But he had no comment.

The result of Kenny Chapman and other drug treatment frauds is that South

Florida has created a sober homes task force to shut down criminals in the drug

rehab industry.

The big legacy from the Kenny Chapman saga and catastrophe is that we got the

Silver Homes Task Force. I mean, we got state funding to go after and arrest

people that are committing these treatment crimes.

I mean, there's been 50 arrests, 200 facilities have shut down.

Nothing scares people more than the threat of them being locked up.

And that's what happened to Kenny.

He goes from nobody to multimillionaire in four years, and he's going to be

spending pretty much the rest of his life in federal prison.

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