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Christina Gallo and Daniel Zehnder came to McPherson Square in the Kensington neighborhood looking for a fix, as they did almost every day.

But on this day in late April, an SUV pulled up. A woman bounded out with an offer that sounded like a miracle: an all-expenses-paid trip for free treatment at a luxury rehab center in California.

Gallo and Zehnder, both then 37, hoped their lives were finally about to turn around after two decades struggling with addiction.

“We wanted to get clean,” Gallo said.

Within days, they were in a Lyft from their Bucks County trailer to the Philadelphia airport. Everything — the Lyft, the flight, the rehab — had been paid for, by whom they did not know.

They landed at a treatment facility in Los Angeles with a gleaming swimming pool, but said they did not see doctors or nurses and were offered little medical treatment to ease their agonizing withdrawal symptoms. Within a few days, the couple had left the clinic, relapsed, and the life-changing trip they envisioned ended in an ambulance rushing to a nearby hospital, where Gallo was admitted to intensive care.

Their California dreams were dashed. But the trip notched another recruitment for The Rehab Specialist, a year-old operation that makes money by scouting the streets for people in addiction to send to independently run rehab centers across the country.

Rehab Specialist recruiters working in Philadelphia offered free plane tickets, housing, and medical care — and at times cash, cell phones, cigarettes, and clothes — to entice people into recovery homes, Inquirer reporters found in interviews with seven people who had firsthand knowledge of the recruiting tactics.

With a single conversation in Kensington, recruiters also got willing patients enrolled in private health insurance that could pay higher rates, often without the patients understanding what they had signed up for — until bills started to arrive.

Businesses like The Rehab Specialist operate as middlemen in an industry where one person’s recovery can be cashed in for hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance payments.

Some referral and marketing services in the addiction treatment industry are legal. But the business is also notoriously rife with insurance fraud and patient brokering — a term that describes referrals to specific clinics in exchange for illegal kickbacks or bribes.

Pennsylvania is seeing a resurgence of patient brokering, according to tracking in 2023 by Highmark Health, a Pittsburgh-based Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliate. Such schemes are especially a concern in Kensington, home to one of the nation’s largest open-air drug markets.

Federal laws and a patchwork of state laws are supposed to protect vulnerable people. Prosecutors have limited resources, however, and rarely investigate low-level players.

Pennsylvania considered stronger laws after a major scandal. In 2019, federal and state prosecutors uncovered a multimillion-dollar insurance fraud scheme at Liberation Way, a Bucks County recovery home. The abuses spurred Pennsylvania lawmakers to introduce legislation that would have made it a felony to use money or services to lure patients into addiction rehabs and other healthcare facilities. The measure died without advancing to a vote.

“People get pretty brazen when nobody’s looking,” said Alan Johnson, chief assistant state attorney in Palm Beach County and a national expert on fraud in the industry.

Johnson called a description of The Rehab Specialist’s practices “classic patient brokering.”

For months, Philadelphia advocates for people in addiction circulated warnings about the business and posted photos of its recruiters on Facebook. They tried to alert police, but never heard back.

The Philadelphia Police Department did not respond to requests for comment, and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said it has not opened an investigation and declined to comment on The Rehab Specialist’s practices. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office also declined comment.

On social media, The Rehab Specialist’s director and founder, Gus Tarrant, strongly disputed critics who accused his business of patient brokering.

“I have never and would never give a client money to go to rehab or encourage them to cycle in and out of programs,” Tarrant wrote in a March post to a Facebook group that monitors addiction treatment.

Tarrant, in a June interview with The Inquirer, reiterated that he and his business have done nothing wrong.

Tarrant said that his operation has a national focus and came to Philadelphia this spring because the city has “the worst drug epidemic in the country.”

Tarrant said his recruiters send patients out of their home state to avoid triggers for relapse, a practice he strongly believes in, having gone through his own recovery from addiction about five years ago. (Though popular in some recovery circles, some research suggests that it can be less effective than getting treatment closer to home, where people have established support networks.)

“Our goal is to help as many people as we can,” Tarrant said. Now based in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Tarrant has channeled his experience into starting at least two businesses in the past five years focused on people in addiction.

He said rehab centers pay his business a flat fee to arrange for people from Kensington to receive treatment in California, but declined to share details. Two Los Angeles treatment centers told The Inquirer they had paid Tarrant and his operation a flat fee for “marketing,” but both also declined to give specific details of the arrangement.

On business cards, Tarrant’s title is listed as The Rehab Specialist’s founding partner; his LinkedIn profile says he started working there in 2024.

The Inquirer was unable to find any documentation indicating the business was formally incorporated in a search of state corporate registries where its recruiters and Tarrant have operated. The Inquirer also did not identify any lawsuits filed against The Rehab Specialist.

The Inquirer interviewed Tarrant by phone this summer. He did not return multiple calls, texts, and emails this month requesting additional comment.

Reporters interviewed five people who were approached by The Rehab Specialist’s recruiters on the street, and another two whose relatives were recruited.

All shared similar stories about how the process worked. Two said they enjoyed eating chef-made meals and benefited from group therapy and daily outings in Los Angeles.

One mother said her son ultimately decided not to board the plane to California, though he continued to receive frequent calls from Rehab Specialist recruiters urging him to travel for treatment. In another case, a woman said her brother did not get the care he needed in California and ended up in the ICU.

Gallo and Zehnder were among the three people interviewed who said the medical care they received in California did not meet their expectations for a luxury rehab facility. The couple blames The Rehab Specialist for launching them on a journey that ended with them worse off than before.

“I don’t know if they have the intention of trying to help people,” Gallo said, “but they’re going about it totally the wrong way.”

Lofty promises and dire warnings

The fliers that The Rehab Specialist recruiters passed out in Kensington featured photos of a Spanish Colonial-style mansion surrounded by palm trees, with a pool in the backyard. They advertised “holistic treatment” including equine therapy, medical detox, and an intensive outpatient program.

All that, in sunny California.

The pitch has particular appeal in Philadelphia, where people have struggled through long waits to access medical detox programs that allow patients to withdraw under the supervision of a doctor or nurse. These programs typically offer medications to help ease intense withdrawal symptoms like nausea, vomiting, and agitation, all of which have become more dangerous as potent animal tranquilizers and industrial chemicals contaminate the local drug supply.

Despite often lofty promises, the addiction treatment industry has long seen high-profile prosecutions over exploitative practices.

In the Philadelphia area, the Liberation Way prosecution sent the company’s CEO and medical director to federal prison. Prosecutors said the center had signed patients up for private insurance plans and paid their premiums. It then charged insurers for shoddy or unnecessary treatment that resulted in excessive insurance payouts.

A few years later in 2022, New Jersey officials found numerous cases of addiction providers illegally paying workers to direct patients with private insurance to their facilities. A second investigation in 2024 prompted two new state laws cracking down on patient brokering.

California and Florida in particular have emerged as hot spots for addiction treatment fraud. In South Florida, a 2022 federal prosecution of a $112-million scheme led to prison sentences for eight people accused of using cash bribes and free rides, flights, drugs, and alcohol to attract patients to a rehab center. The payments were distributed via a network of lower-level street recruiters, purportedly hired for “marketing,” according to an affidavit from the case.

California, with its large number of rehab centers and overburdened regulators, has become such a magnet for fraud that industry insiders refer to the greater Los Angeles area as “Rehab Riviera.”

But addiction treatment scams are often ignored because they involve sprawling national investigations that require significant resources. State prosecutors can’t justify the expense and federal prosecutors won’t take on low-level fraudsters, according to Johnson. Palm Beach County prosecutors stepped up enforcement after the state passed stricter laws in 2017.

“You have to prioritize cases. This is not high on their hit list, unless it’s going to make a big splash,” said Deb Herzog, a former federal prosecutor turned fraud investigator at Anthem Blue Cross.

Warnings about The Rehab Specialist instead came from Melissa Ruby, 46, and other local advocates. Ruby runs a Facebook group dedicated to monitoring patient brokering nationwide, and started sharing photos on social media as soon as the recruiters showed up in Kensington. She did the same when they were reportedly spotted in Pittsburgh.

She said she also alerted a Philadelphia police officer who runs an independent nonprofit to help people in addiction, but never heard back.

For Ruby, the issue is personal: She has a relative who was a victim of patient brokering.

“BEWARE!!” she wrote in a March post about The Rehab Specialist, punctuated with red stop sign emojis. “No good will come from any of this!!”

Tarrant, the Rehab Specialist director, was a member of Ruby’s Facebook group at the time and wrote that the vast majority of the negative information Ruby had posted about him was “completely wrong.”

“I am not paid by the client or any ‘referral fees’ based on clients sent,” Tarrant wrote.

When asked in the Facebook group why The Rehab Specialist was sending patients out of state on free flights, he declined to answer, writing that he believed the questions were in bad faith. He encouraged people to reach out to him directly so he could explain.

After a few weeks, Ruby kicked him out of the group. “Adios, Gus!” she wrote.

A sunny pitch in Kensington

One day in April, two female Rehab Specialist recruiters introduced themselves to Samuel Rosato, 47 at the time, as he got off the El near Kensington. He was immediately intrigued.

“They were just real pretty and tan,” Rosato said.

They later said all they needed were a few identifying details, and they would be able to set him up with private insurance that would pay for everything at a luxury rehab out west.

Rosato scribbled down his Social Security number and handed over his ID card. Within 10 minutes, he said, the recruiters told him they had secured him Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance. Rosato, like others interviewed by The Inquirer, did not know who was paying for his insurance or lodging.

The Rehab Specialist recruiters, whose names he shared with The Inquirer, are not licensed insurance brokers or healthcare navigators in Pennsylvania.

Allison Hoffman, a health law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said that without more information on how patients were signed up for insurance plans, it is difficult to say definitively whether insurance laws were violated. But, she added, “it sounds potentially illegal.”

Tarrant said his employees “don’t deal with any of the insurance.” He said they do not directly enroll clients in insurance, but rather direct recruits to independent, licensed insurance brokers.

Patients “sign up for the insurance themselves,” he said. He declined to say more, citing patient confidentiality.

A week later, Rosato said an Uber picked him up at his mother’s home in Northeast Philadelphia for his flight to California. He said he was joined by three other people from Kensington who told him they had also been recruited by The Rehab Specialist.

“I love it out here,” Rosato said in June, several months into his recovery in California. “I’m trying to rebuild my life now, starting at the bottom.” (Rosato stopped responding to calls and texts from The Inquirer in the fall; his mother said this month that he’s back in Philadelphia, but she is not sure where.)

Jerome Hayward, 48 at the time, and his girlfriend, Megan McDonald, 39 at the time, also didn’t ask too many questions when they were recruited in front of a Kensington soup kitchen and traveled separately to California in the spring.

Told only that she had been “approved” for treatment, McDonald said she didn’t realize she had been signed up for a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan until she received paperwork at a hospital.

“How would we pay for it?” McDonald asked. “Because we’re broke. We got no money.”

A rising entrepreneur

Tarrant rose in the rehab industry after getting his start vacuuming floors at a rehab company run by LaMitchell Person, a mentor who Tarrant credited for giving him “the opportunity to get sober and clean,” in an interview with a local news station in California. The two later became business partners.

They were working together at a California rehab company in 2021 when a 22-year-old named Dean Rea died of a fentanyl overdose after leaving an associated sober home.

Rea’s mother later accused Tarrant, Person, and other employees of contributing to the death in a lawsuit filed against the facility, Ken Seeley Communities. Neither Tarrant nor Person, then the facility’s executive director, was named as a defendant in the case.

In court records, Rea’s mother claimed Tarrant falsely told Rea that his insurance wouldn’t cover more intensive treatment elsewhere.

“Gus is, essentially, a salesman whose goal is to admit as many patients to KSC as possible,” their legal complaint said. The rehab company denied the allegations, and Rea’s suit was settled in a confidential agreement in 2023 for an undisclosed amount.

In an interview this month, Person called the lawsuit’s claims inaccurate. “Fentanyl killed her son. Not Gus, not me, and not the organization,” Person said.

By the time the suit was settled, Tarrant and Person had both left the business.

In 2022, they filed paperwork to incorporate a company called Origin Addiction Services, based in Idaho, according to state corporate records. An official address on the website is a P.O. box in a Boise strip mall.

The company’s website said it offered addiction recovery services such as interventions, sober companionship, counseling, and transportation.

The company’s website featured an ‘about’ page with professional headshots of a nine-member executive team. All but three of those headshots appeared to be drawn from stock photo services, and The Inquirer was unable to trace the individuals to authentic social media or LinkedIn accounts.

After The Inquirer contacted Person about the photos in September, all of them – except his own — were removed overnight. Person later said in a phone interview that the stock photos and some of the employee names were “placeholders,” but insisted that the staffers were real.

The company filed paperwork to dissolve a year later; Person said it had never done business, and he and Tarrant went on to pursue separate endeavors.

Person was in Philadelphia recruiting people at the intersection of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues in March, according to a city employee there to help people in addiction. Person handed him a business card identifying himself as a “regional director” of The Rehab Specialist, said the employee, whom The Inquirer is not naming because he was not authorized to speak to the media and feared losing his job.

Person answered the phone this summer when The Inquirer called the Rehab Specialist’s general number, but he said he did not work there.

In a follow-up interview this month, he said that Tarrant had hired him to build a call center for a California rehab, saying that was his only involvement with The Rehab Specialist.

He said he had not come to Kensington and was not responsible for business cards that listed him as the regional director.

“Gus wanted me to work for him, because we are friends,” Person said.

A dream dashed in California

Desperate to get clean, Christina Gallo and Daniel Zehnder accepted the offer to fly to California after being recruited in Kensington earlier this year. A luxury van picked the couple up when they arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on May 3, they said.

The driver took the couple to Gevs Recovery, a large gated house in a residential neighborhood in Northridge. Gevs has been licensed as a drug abuse recovery home since 2024. State records show that as of early August, no complaints about its care have been filed with the California Department of Public Health.

Gallo and Zehnder said the Gevs house was dark and empty when they arrived, aside from a handful of employees. Gallo began to panic as drug withdrawal left her shaking and sweating, with a bloody nose and headache pangs that felt like she had stuck her finger in an electrical outlet.

“I said, ‘What’s going on here? Where’s any of the nurses or the doctors?’” she recalled. “‘Who’s going to be taking care of us, medically?’”

“We don’t do that here,” she remembers them saying. The Gevs employees told Gallo they could send her to a hospital, or give her some Tylenol, she said.

Alarmed, Gallo and Zehnder decided to leave. On their way out, they said a woman descending the stairs told them she had just left the hospital after a month there.

“Are you guys from Philadelphia, too?” Gallo recalled the woman asking.

She and Zehnder headed to a cheap motel, but they didn’t feel they could stand the withdrawal effects and decided to buy drugs nearby. By the morning, their symptoms had grown worse, and they returned to Gevs to demand plane tickets home.

Gevs agreed to buy the tickets, a requirement under California law for rehab centers that provide free one-way airfare.

Kristine Kesh, an operations manager at Gevs, told The Inquirer the center does have medical staff on site and does offer medication treatment for withdrawal.

“These clients have been addicts for most of their lives, and they come in expecting this glorious detox,” Kesh said. “Whatever they’re expecting is not realistic. I mean, you can’t help everybody.”

At the airport, Gallo vomited on herself before collapsing to the ground in pain. Zehnder defecated and vomited on himself. An ambulance took them to the emergency room, where Gallo was placed in intensive care.

After two days in the emergency room and the intensive care unit, Gallo and Zehnder were released. Zehnder’s mother paid for their flights home.

While Zehnder was away, bills from Highmark started arriving at his mother’s house — even though he had been promised free treatment.

The bill, which misspelled his last name, said he owed a $267 premium for the month of May. He said he also received a $700 bill for the ambulance ride from the LA airport to the emergency room, which he threw away.

Six months after their disastrous trip, recovery feels as far away as when their return flight from California landed. At the Philadelphia airport, they hailed a cab and went straight to Kensington. They wanted to inject heroin, right away.