9News is at it again: People using bogus documents to buy medical marijuana

9NEWS.com | Denver | Colorado's Online News Leader | People using bogus documents to buy medical marijuana


DENVER - 9Wants to Know has uncovered evidence that hundreds of people are buying medical marijuana with forged or fraudulent paperwork and the state of Colorado can do little to stop the fraud.


A two-month investigation reveals people posing as medical professionals, forging and selling doctors' signatures, and some doctors with restricted medical licenses, are signing medical marijuana applications.

Experts say the forgery and fraud is happening because the state has a huge backlog of applications and cannot examine the documents quickly or carefully enough.

"You can see how that opens up a Pandora's box because patients can just kind of fake paperwork and say they've been to a doctor or whatever and use that to get into the dispensaries," Doctor Phil Nguyen of Happy Clinic Denver said. "They're not legal. It's just some willy-nilly person out there writing all these fake documents."

Nguyen is one of five doctors 9Wants to Know interviewed who has had their signatures copied or forged. Nguyen has seen at least 15 medical marijuana applications from patients he has never examined, yet each has his signature on them.

Medical marijuana applications that include a physician's certification can legally be used to buy marijuana while patients wait for the state to process their paperwork and mail them an actual license.

Nguyen filed a police report against one of his patients after he was notified the man used white-out to cover his name and date of birth and began selling documents to. The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office has issued an arrest warrant for forgery for Nguyen's former patient, Gregory Johnson.

A patient who did not want her full name used because she works in a courthouse says she bought one of the forged documents from Johnson that bears Nguyen's signature.

"Before we filled out the paperwork, I'm asking him, 'What all do we have to do? You know, are you sure this is legal?' He said, 'Oh yeah, this is legal. I work for the doctor, the doctor's on board with this,'" said Jessica who bought the documents in March.

Jessica says she used the bogus paperwork to buy medical marijuana at six dispensaries across Denver until one of them in May noticed something was wrong and called the doctor.

Johnson could not be reached for comment. But his mother says she watched him sell the documents out of her home.

"He said, 'I license people for medical marijuana for a doctor,'" his mother Wilsie Johnson said.

Another patient, David Norris, said he bought medical marijuana documents from a woman out of an apartment complex. Norris told 9Wants to Know the woman claimed to be a doctor and was African-American.

The doctor's name on the documents was Rita Starritt. She is a legitimate doctor but she is not black, she is white and says she has never seen Norris before.

Starritt has discovered a half dozen other patients were using her signature with out her permission on their medical marijuana cards.

9Wants to Know also talked to the owner of the Blue Sky Care clinic. They used a doctor to examine a hundred patients only to learn later his medical license has been restricted by the Board of Medical Examiners. He no longer has permission to write prescriptions.

All the patients we talked to who purchased fraudulent documents say they used the paper work to buy medical marijuana with no questions asked. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment told 9Wants to Know the fraud is happening because of a backlog of applications.

Hyman says the state receives 5,000 new applications every week. It will be six months or more before applications sent in this week will be processed.

In the mean time, patients are instructed to use copies of their application to buy medical marijuana.

"Of course we would like to have the backlog resolved and we are working very hard to achieve that," Hyman said.

The state is hiring 25 new employees and developing a new computer system to speed up the process. He admits it could be a year before they catch up with the applications already received by their office.

"When we are caught up, I feel like it will be more difficult for the bad players to get away with it," Hyman said.

a YEAR to get caught up

LOL

fuck. I want to work for those people. they get a YEAR and an entire industry got a MONTH.

nice.

Sooner or later we are going to have to sit back take a deep breath and have a good laugh. This is getting more and more fucked up everyday. We have Romer who is trying to take away marijuana in Co, we have the Corry's wanting more taxs, we have the corry bullshitting Caregivers and patients, we have the health dept that is a year behind, we have new laws that took effect in a month with no forums and half the people not knowing when this or that takes place and it just keeps on piling up.

Screw it just legalize it dont even tax it nothing just legalize it what will happen is what happened to everything that becomes legal. At first everyone will grow there own and just smoke away and as the fun of it fades which it will beacuse of the legalization. When you can go to the store and buy weed why grow it. think about alchole why make it anymore like they had to during the prohibitions when the store carries bottles of it alrdy made. Tobacco why grow it when you can just go buy cigeretes from the store. :rasta:

we don't need another 6% tax. I can't believe they are behind that?!

we don't need to give away the damn farm for legitimacy! It's done, it's as legit as its gonna get until we legalize for all.

they are already extracting PLENTY. If they want to make more money, make it EASIER to be a patient, not harder. That way, more people can buy their herb at Centers, where tax is being collected.

I saw this coming the day i got my paperwork. Anyone could print out the app and fill it out and go to a dispensary. The forged document wont help you in court though. And anyone could pose as a doctor and charge $100 all day for signatures, no one would find out till its too late. I thought my docotor was a phony for sure when i got my card, it happened so fast, and the place was so sketch i thought for sure i got conned. But i got my card, and a rec for 50 plants.

Back during the huge boom last year my husband got his referral. When we went to mail it in we noticed it was filled out in full except his name was blank. This could have been a major source of fraud if we were different types of people. We let the organization know about it after the fact and they laughed. Guess they did not take it too seriously.

It was this type of incompetence that allowed for fraud to exist. Add this circumstance to the fact it would take 6 months for anyone to look at the paperwork creates an environment made for fraud. We had hundreds of people jumping on the MMJ bandwagon that did not care about legality or regulations. It was about making a buck.

I am surprised we have not heard about more of this, then again when the backlog is this huge we still might hear of more abuse in the months to come.

Let's take this out of the hands of incompetence and legalize it completely.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by copobo

we don't need another 6% tax. I can't believe they are behind that?!

we don't need to give away the damn farm for legitimacy! It's done, it's as legit as its gonna get until we legalize for all.

they are already extracting PLENTY. If they want to make more money, make it EASIER to be a patient, not harder. That way, more people can buy their herb at Centers, where tax is being collected.

---

The state legislature is under the impression that the business of medical marijuana is big BUCKS.

And there is a reason for this. We had one dispensory owner in C. Spgs.--last year BRAGGING to the Gazette telegraph-that he made 200K in a couple of months--and then we had that moron in Highland Ranch that stated he was on course to make 400K in a single year growing out of his basement--LOL.

Everyone read those articles including law makers --whom now believe that medical marijuana is the Exon of the new pot of Gold in this state.

These bragging morons --did more to hurt this industry than anyone else. They were so STUPID--to make these comments about their income--they in effect added a Tsunami of competition for themselves--dispensories opened up overnight--based on their statement. Obviously the state believed it too so now it is tax, tax, tax, and license fee these dispensories so much that I imagine over 1/2 will be out of business within a few months.

There is just not that many patients around to support this many dispensories in this state.

Obviously they cannot handle the bureaucracy they created.

Speaking of which, our government leaders in this area are clearly reactionary. A guy like Romer shows an amazing lack of vision. They have now created a medicinal state bureaucracy which they are unfairly treating and taxing. Cannabis is now a government controlled medicinal cluster fuck. In this country, you cannot tax medicine!

The only way out now for the Feds & States is to legalize it. Its a win-win for them because they won't have to worry about controlling cannabis as medicine with huge legal liability and they will be able to tax the shit out of it, cleanly. Romer and his ilk will do what is best for them. Sometimes these officials are so thick that they can't even figure out what is best for them. Their self-interest blinds their own self-interest. Its ironic that cannabis would be able to treat that better than most anything.