Friday, November 28, 2014

Michigan Podiatrist Loses License After $135K Embezzlement Conviction From "Vulnerable Adult"

From MLive on 11/28/14:

The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs has immediately suspended a Portage podiatrist's license based on her conviction on embezzlement charges Kalamazoo County Circuit Court.

Dr. Regina Lynne Spears, also known as Regina Lynne Spears-Everett, was convicted on July 11 of one count of embezzlement from a Vulnerable Adult — $20,000 or more, a felony and sentenced in Sept. 9, 2014, to serve nine months in jail, five years probation, and ordered to pay fines, costs and restitution totaling $169,572.18.

From January 2010 to January 2011, Spears-Everett, 51, stole more than $135,000 in cash from the life savings of Toni A. Verdries, a 91-year-old woman with dementia who Spears-Everett is believed to have first met in the 1990s at a doctor's office.

It took a jury less than two hours to find Spears-Everett guilty.

According to prosecutors and an investigation by the Portage Department of Public Safety, the doctor lavished some of the money she took on friends and family--   including an $18,000 car for a friend and $21,500 to pay a relative's outstanding debt.

She spent more than $2,500 on chocolates from a fudge company in South Carolina, authorities said.
Michigan's Public Health Code provides for the mandatory summary suspension of a health professional's license upon the conviction of a felony.

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Read the whole story here.

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