• FDA warns of fake agents scamming drug buyers

    By Reuters

    Con artists posing as U.S. Food and Drug Administration agents are trying to extort money from people who buy medications online and over the telephone, the agency warned on Tuesday.

    The FDA, which is charged with protecting consumers, says these fake government officials gather people's personal information from online transactions, questionnaires and consumer lists and then call them demanding fines.

    The scammers tell victims that buying drugs over the Internet or telephone is illegal and threaten them with prosecution unless a fine or fee ranging from $100 to $250,000 is paid, the agency said in a statement.

    "If you refuse to pay up, the caller threatens to search your properties, arrest or deport you, put you in jail, and even physically harm you," the FDA said.

    The problem is being investigated by FDA agents with help from other federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.

    Authorities acknowledge that scams of this kind are hard to trace. The crooks can sound convincing if they're armed with your address, phone number, Social Security number, date of birth, purchase history and credit card account number.

    "The best thing they can do is ignore the caller and hang up," said Philip Walsky, special agent in charge at FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations. He stressed that true FDA agents do not call up consumers to demand payment.

    The good news for frightened consumers is that no one is known to have been approached in person, so there is little danger of a physical threat. In fact, most of the fraudulent callers are overseas.

    Nor is buying drugs online illegal, though the FDA has warned consumers that some websites peddle unsafe medicines and offered advice on how to identify trustworthy Internet pharmacies. 

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  • Mass murderers often not mentally ill, but seeking revenge, experts say

    By Maggie Fox, Senior Writer, NBC News

    Those who commit mass murders are often angry and isolated, but usually aren't mentally ill, violence experts said Friday after a shooting during the midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater. James Holmes was arrested as a suspect in the shooting that killed 12 people and wounded 59 others.

    “It takes a certain degree of clear-headedness to plan and execute a crime like this,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston, who has written several books on mass murder and school violence.

    There are exceptions – Jared Loughner, who shot and killed six people in Arizona in 2011, gravely injuring then-member of Congress Gabrielle Giffords, was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Mental health experts say people with mental illness are not any more likely than anyone else to become violent, however.

    Mass murderers “often times feel that they are right and everybody else is wrong,” Fox said in a telephone interview. “They really tend to externalize blame, to see other people as responsible for their problems."

    They are often socially isolated. “They tend to be a failure at life,” Fox added.

    12 dead, 59 injured in Colorado movie theater shooting

    Such well-planned attacks are rare and not meant to make a statement, Fox said. “They basically want revenge,” he said.  “Contrary to the common misperception that these guys suddenly snap and go berserk, these are well-planned executions.”

    The film the victims were watching is loaded with violence but it’s unlikely that actually inspired the attacker, Fox said. The film was opening that night and it’s doubtful the attacker was familiar with the script.

    “It was just coincidental, although it just made the situation more ambiguous for the people involved,” he said. Some of those who were in the theater said they initially first thought the shooting was part of the screening. 

    Early reports suggest Holmes did not have a police record and the University of Colorado has confirmed he was in the process of dropping out of a Ph.D. program in neuroscience there.

    Former FBI profiler Clint van Zandt  told TODAY that Holmes was almost certainly acting alone. “Today, so far, he appears to be … the lone wolf,” Van Zandt said. The attack was carefully planned, both Van Zandt and Fox said, which fits the patterns of such attackers.

    “They typically plan carefully how they are going to do it, where they are going to do it, what they are going to bring and what they are going to wear,” Fox said. In this case, the victims were not deliberately chosen, although the place, a packed movie theater, probably was.

    The attack may encourage copycat actions but not necessarily, Fox said. “What bothers me in situations like this is to see lists of the worst mass shootings,” he said. “It encourages people to try to break records.”

    Dr. Victor Schwartz, medical director of the Jed Foundation, which works to promote mental health among college students, agreed. “The media needs to be really careful in these situations,” he said. “On the one hand, you need to report the story. On the other hand, there is the danger of sensationalizing it, almost romanticizing the drama here.”

    Schwartz also advises resisting any attempts to speculate on whether violent videos or movies may have affected Holmes. “The research slants both ways,” he said. Some studies suggest that children who watch and play violent videos may become desensitized to some aspects of violence, but there is not a clear consensus.

    “None of these things is caused by a single factor,” Schwartz said. “Obviously, these are always very complicated events. The impulse is to find a simple explanation for complicated situations. It is important to resist it.”

    Experts say it’s almost impossible to predict attacks like this one. “Neighbors will come forward and say it was no surprise,” Fox said. “But it’s all after the fact. Beforehand, even though someone may fit a profile, we can’t predict they will do this sort of crime. It’s a very rare event and not predictable. That’s part of what makes it so scary.”

    Former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt speaks with TODAY's Matt Lauer again, calling the Colorado movie theater shooter a "lone wolf," which he says is "the thing the FBI director and others are most worried about."

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  • Feds announce biggest-ever Medicare fraud, totaling $450 million

    By Scott Cohn, CNBC

    Federal prosecutors have charged 107 people, including doctors and nurses, in seven U.S. cities, accusing them of taking part in schemes to cheat the Medicare system out of $452 million through phony billing. Authorities are calling this the largest one-day takedown ever by the government’s Medicare fraud task force.


    At a news conference Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said they “underscore the Justice Department’s determination to move aggressively in bringing to justice those who would violate our laws and defraud the Medicare program for their personal gain.”

    Read the original story at CNBC.com

    The 107 health care professionals, also including social workers and owners of health care companies, charged Wednesday worked in Miami, Tampa, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles and Baton Rouge.

    The arrests are the latest in a three-year crackdown on health care fraud, which is estimated to cost taxpayers between $80 and $160 billion per year. Authorities recovered a record $4.1 billion last year.

    Government Announces Massive Crackdown on Medicare Fraud

    The government has also suspended payments to the 52 provider organizations where the individuals worked. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the operation, including the arrests and the cutoffs of payments, are part of an effort to preempt fraud instead of relying on what she called the old “pay and chase” model.

    “Now, we’re analyzing patterns and trends and claims data, instead of just going claim by claim,” Sebelius said.

    Still, court filings allege the defendants were able to carry out their schemes for years.

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    In Baton Rouge, seven people who ran two community mental health centers are accused of submitting more than $225 million in false claims for mental health services in a scheme that began in 2005 and continued through October. This case alone is one of the biggest ever Medicare fraud cases.

    Government officials say the defendants from Baton Rouge rounded up drug addicts, homeless people and the elderly and used them to submit false claims for treatment.

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    In Houston, owners of four private ambulance companies were accused of billing the system for non-existent or unnecessary runs.

    In Miami, more than 50 professionals were charged with carrying out a $137 million scam involving mental health services and home health care.

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    Other cases involved fraudulent billing for ambulance services, durable medical equipment, psychotherapy and prescription drugs.

    Pete Williams, NBC News’ justice correspondent, contributed to this report.  Follow Scott Cohn on Twitter.

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  • Michigan man may have intentionally infected hundreds with HIV

    A Michigan man has admitted to police, and at least one victim, that he intentionally infected sex partners with the HIV virus. WOOD's Leon Hendrix reports.

    By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

    Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET: David Dean Smith's attorney, Richard E. Zambon of Grand Rapids, tells msnbc.com that he plans on "exploring all options" in defending Smith, saying specifically that "I am concerned about his mental health."

    Zambon said he hadn't yet seen all of the police and medical records in the case and couldn't talk about specifics, but he said the law under which Smith was charged is a "relatively new statute with not many cases having interpreted" it, meaning few court precedents have been established. 

    Original post: A Michigan man has been charged with felony sex offenses after he told police he was HIV-positive and had set out to intentionally infect as many people as he could, police said. Health officials have issued an alert warning that "possibly hundreds of people have been exposed to HIV."

    The man, identified as David Dean Smith, 51, of Comstock Park, north of Grand Rapids, was arraigned Wednesday on a second count of "AIDS-sexual penetration with an uninformed partner" after police said they had identified a second possible victim.

    Smith was initially charged with one count after he went to Grand Rapids police last week and said he had intentionally had unprotected sex with as many people as he could over the last three years, according to police.

    According to documents on file with Grand Rapids 61st District Court, Smith claimed to have had sex with "thousands" of partners, intending to kill them by infecting them with HIV. Some of those people are from outside the Grand Rapids area, including people Smith met over the Internet, he told police, according to documents.

    Smith faces separate preliminary hearings on the two charges on Jan. 4 and Jan. 9. He remains in the Kent County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bond. Smith's attorney did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

    The Kent County Health Department issued an alert Tuesday warning that "hundreds of people may have been exposed to HIV," urging potential victims to come forward and encouraging everyone who may have concerns to be tested for HIV.

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    One of the two possible victims police say they have found so far said in an interview with NBC station WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids that she was diagnosed with HIV in October 2008.

    The woman, whom authorities and NBC News are not identifying, said she knew immediately that it was Smith — whom she said she met through an ad on the Yahoo! Personals website — who had infected her. She called him "a predator" and "a sociopath."

    The woman said Smith sent her a text message letting her know that he was going to surrender to police. The message read: "Turning myself into the law, my life is over. Take care. Always love you."

    "It's something he should have done years ago," she said. "He shouldn't get a pat on the head for what he did."

    Smith said at his arraignment Wednesday that he has been undergoing counseling. Court documents show that Smith was admitted to Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services recently because he was "suicidal" and had tried to kill himself at least once.

    The records say the hospital determined that Smith is "sexually aroused by causing pain to females."

    A Facebook page with Smith's name, address and pictures says he graduated from Harry Hill High School in Lansing in 1978 and studied at the University of Phoenix, a for-profit online institution. It shows that he has worked in telecommunications for several companies.

    Posts to the account stopped on Nov. 30. Before then, the account owner posted some messages that could possibly be interpreted as alluding to his situation.

    "Someone special to me asked me a question about scandulous people, this was my thought," he wrote on Nov. 5. "Let me know what ya think. When you are young you believe people will love you like you want and keep an eye out for those scandulous people...as you get older you realize most everyone is scandulous so you dont trust anyone but keep an eye out for the special ones that truley care."

    A day earlier, this message appeared:

    "I pray for blessings to all I know, for forgiveness for my shortcommings to them and that they may no peace. And last, that I love them all as much as I can."

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    The woman who spoke to WOOD said she had no doubt that there are many other victims. She said Smith told her that he had had sex with as many as 3,000 people, including men as well as women.

    "He hits drifters," she said in the interview. "He hits people who are young. He hits young women, and from what I understand, he hits men, too. Those are his targets."   

    Dani Carlson and Leon Hendrix of NBC station WOOD of Grand Rapids, Mich., contributed to this report. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook

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