Tarek Greiss struggled. The CEO of two addiction treatment centers often said he entered the world of recovery through the front door, as a client. And when he left this world, his passing may have underscored just how difficult staying sober can be.
Greiss, 51, was facing federal charges of conspiracy and paying for patients when he died at his Costa Mesa home on Aug. 6. It was the combined effects of fentanyl and acetaminophen — the main ingredient in Tylenol — that killed him, the autopsy report from the Orange County Coroner concluded. His death was ruled accidental.
“Tarek maintained his sobriety for nearly eight years before he succumbed to his addiction. During that time he was a friend, mentor, and savior to many people,” said John L. Littrell, a partner with Bienert Katzman Littrell Williams, who had been one of Greiss’s attorneys. “I wish someone had been there to save him.”
Greiss was an anesthesiologist in several states, including Nevada, who lost his medical license and his family before finding sobriety and starting anew in California. His mother, Mary Greiss-Shipley, said her son had the passion of a preacher, extolled sobriety and saved many lives. She also said that, because he had endured three knee surgeries, he was in pain on the day of his death, even as he tried to keep to plans to meet friends for dinner to celebrate the anniversary of his multi-year sobriety. When he failed to show up at the restaurant and didn’t respond to phone calls, his friends went to his house and found him in the bathroom.
Greiss-Shipley believes her son wasn’t trying to get high the night he died. Instead, she said, “he was trying to have less pain so he could go out with his friends.
“I just want people to know the truth about him,” she added. “It hurts me to have his reputation ruined like this.”
Though Greiss was facing criminal charges at the time of his death, Greiss-Shipley believes her son tried to operate within the law, hiring attorneys to go over contracts and make sure they weren’t violating the rules. “He knew there was a lot of shady stuff going on in Orange County, but that wasn’t him. He’d say, ‘Mom, I’m one of those people who fight it, and they want to make an example of me. I have complied in every way and I’m so passionate about what I’m doing. I want to help.’
Her only son was a bright and motivated kid, she said. He was president of his fraternity at the University of Washington, went to medical school at George Washington University, was a surgical resident at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, then did his anesthesia residency at the University of Texas Medical Center Hermann hospital in Houston before addiction took hold and he lost everything.
“He was a very motivated, very driven human being,” she said. “Everything he did to the extreme. His addiction was an extreme. His sobriety was an extreme. He was really committed, so committed, to helping.”
Indictment
Greiss was one of 345 people charged last year in what the U.S. Department of Justice called “a historic nationwide enforcement action” that ensnared more than 100 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals on a wide variety of health care fraud charges.
The feds were listening when Greiss was on the phone with his Tustin marketing firm, SeKe, back in 2019, according to his indictment. A new federal law, the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018, had made giving or receiving money in exchange for addiction treatment referrals a federal crime.
According to the indictment, Greiss said he “was hungry for admissions” and low on detox-eligible patients — the people who bring in the biggest insurance payouts. He also discussed the monetary value of 19 people based on the insurance reimbursements they could generate, comparing that to payments already made to SeKe under a marketing services agreement that prosecutors have termed “a sham.”
A law enforcement source posed as a potential buyer of Greiss’s rehab businesses in 2018. In recorded conversations, Greiss explained how he paid brokers on a per-patient basis, and kept track of those payments on “a secret spreadsheet,” the documents allege. Greiss also spoke about getting kickbacks from labs that perform drug tests, ranging from $35,000 to $50,000 a month, and concealing those payments by having them wired to a separate limited liability company.
Greiss pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and “illegal remunerations for referrals to clinical treatment facilities” and was released on a $10,000 bond. The case has been dismissed in the wake of his death.
Those in the recovery community described the new details about Greiss’ death as part of a sad cycle that’s become common during the opioid crisis.
“I’m never really surprised when I hear someone with a history of substance use disorder overdoses. However, when it happens to someone that works in the treatment field, it feels somehow sharper. And it always gives me pause for thought as to if, and for how long, a person might have been an impaired professional,” said David Skonezny, founder of the “It’s Time for Ethics in Addiction Treatment” Facebook group, which now has nearly 6,000 members.
“In Tarek’s case, and with his specific history, that pause gets really loud, and is a reminder both that we need to care for our professionals who are in their own recovery journey as well as encourage more stringent monitoring by agencies whose business this ought to be,” he said by email.
“The other thing that jumps out at me is, one more time, we have someone working in the field who – per federal charges – was living the personal incongruence and illegality of helping people while simultaneously preying on them, while claiming their own recovery….I can’t help but feel that this massive machine of death made up by body brokers and those that support them has lost another cog. And that the machine maybe got just a little weaker and maybe even a single life will be saved from sacrifice to it.
“One of these days, and I hope not so far off, California and in particular Orange and Los Angeles Counties will take a page from Florida’s book on the subject and start putting some real teeth into investigations, arrests and prosecutions. And I hope the agencies and stakeholders in the treatment profession start taking a much harder look at who is doing what, and under what conditions. And they grow some teeth of their own.”
Source: Orange County Register
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