00000184-2ffc-d624-afed-bfffb46a0000Unlicensed medical practitioners like ‘Dr. Rick’ prey on the sick and uninsured —who sometimes pay with their lives
On the morgellons-disease page of Rick Van Thiel’s website, itsonlynatural.me, the self-described natural healer poses nude in before-after photos meant to demonstrate the effectiveness of his treatment for the mysterious skin-dwelling parasites. He prescribes pulsed electromagnetic-field therapy, colloidal silver and enzymes — the latter to kill the “genetically modified material of an element not know (sic) to this planet.” (The traditional health-science community, incidentally, does not agree that morgellons is a legitimate medical condition.) In a YouTube video documenting Van Thiel’s illegal excision of a mass from a man’s back, “Dr. Rick,” as fans call him, tells an interviewer holding the camera that he is not a surgeon but has played one in a movie. Prior to becoming a fake doctor, he was a porn actor, male escort and sex-toy salesman. The jokes practically write themselves.
But the Van Thiel case is no comedy. By September 30, when he was arrested and charged with illegal firearms possession, he had treated “hundreds” of people, he estimates, at his trailer near Nellis and Owens; three have died, according to news reports. Although no other indictments have been handed down yet, Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said his office is investigating Van Thiel’s other potential crimes, which may include murder, sexual assault and practicing medicine without a license. (Wolfson declined to give a timeline on further legal action, citing the case’s extreme complexity.) Dr. Rick’s websites and CraigsList ads targeted people with chronic diseases, offering cures for cancer, HIV, herpes, hepatitis and HPV, as well as abortions, circumcision and other surgical procedures.
“I care about people,” Van Thiel said in a jail videophone interview with local news Channel 3 on October 7. “I don’t want to see people suffer … that’s why I’m on trial — for saving somebody’s life, for curing cancer.”
When FBI and Metro investigators raided the trailer that served as his clinic, they found records for 80 so-called “patients.” Joseph Iser, chief health officer for the Southern Nevada Health District, says some of those individuals have been linked to records in an infectious disease database, confirming that Van Thiel likely treated people with HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C. Reports of unsanitary conditions in the trailer cast an especially urgent light on pleas by the health district and law enforcement to those who sought Van Thiel’s cures to come forward and be tested for dangerous diseases.
Though his crimes may be among the most egregious, Van Thiel isn’t the only quack doctor to have been caught in Las Vegas. In 2014, Metro arrested Eric Vargas-Rivera, who said he was a doctor in Mexico but couldn’t afford licensure in the U.S., for operating an illegal medical office that offered dental care, family medicine and pain management. In 2012, North Las Vegas Police arrested Juan Alberto Ruan-Rivera for posing as a doctor and sexually assaulting two of his female patients. In 2011, Elena Caro died after being given a supposed buttock enhancement at a makeshift plastic surgery clinic in East Las Vegas by a Colombian national who claimed he was a homeopathic doctor back home. That high-profile case followed the 2009 shutdown of several “botanicas,” natural medicine shops predominantly found in Hispanic neighborhoods, when a woman died due to complications from a gynological surgery done in one of them.
These cases reflect one cause that Iser suspects was behind Van Thiel’s success: the reluctance of undocumented immigrants to seek medical care in the traditional American medical system.
“There could be cultural issues in some cases,” he says. “The most likely reasons are economic, though. Even people with insurance might have gone to him to save money on procedures. Many of his patients seem to have been undocumented and uninsured.”
Specific aspects of Van Thiel’s practice suggest he may also have appealed to people with anti-government sentiments. As payment for his services, Van Thiel requested Bitcoin or silver. And his website includes a page titled “sovereign babies,” encouraging parents to choose home births and avoid dooming their babies to being “property of the people that call themselves the ‘government,’ the same looting parasites that will claim the legislated right to expropriate your child from you because you refused to allow your child to be injected with toxic vaccines, decide to school at home, or any other thing they disapprove of.”
During his Channel 3 interview from jail, Van Thiel said he would represent himself in court, using the defense that he was performing private services based on contracts entered into between consenting adults, who were aware of the risks involved. His marketing makes clear his belief that he is free to offer his services unfettered by medical-board licensure or oversight.
Katherine Harris, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General, says medical fraud is tracked by state medical boards, so she couldn’t estimate how widespread such crimes are. The federal government does prosecute unlicensed individuals who commit health-care fraud, she says, but those cases are rare. While Edward Cousineau, executive director of the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners, wouldn’t comment on this specific case, referring Desert Companion instead to the FBI, he says his office only tracks complaints against licensed medical doctors and refers complaints about rogue practitioners to law enforcement. (The FBI didn’t respond to interview requests.)
“In my three and a half years as district attorney, this type of situation is uncommon,” Wolfson said. “I don’t think there are a lot of Rick Van Thiels out there. But there are people who prey on the vulnerable. I don’t think he’s the only person who’s ever done that.”
Besides wanting to make sure everyone treated by Dr. Rick is safe and gets tested for infectious diseases, officials want people to know that, regardless of their financial or legal status, there are avenues for receiving sanctioned medical care, such as community centers and low-cost clinics. Wolfson adds, “People can also turn to their own cultural resources, like the Mexican Consulate, which is very forward-thinking and helpful. If you reach out to them, you’ll get referrals and assistance navigating our health-care system.”
Cousineau advises Nevadans to look up the status of their medical doctors’ licenses at medboard.nv.gov, and not to forget that osteopathic doctors have their own separate board, at osteo.state.nv.us.
Most importantly, Iser says, people should be aware that no consent form excuses someone from doing harm under the false pretense of being a health-care practitioner. “You can’t have people sign away their rights,” he says. “Patients sign permission forms explaining the risks and benefits of procedures, but Van Thiel wasn’t a physician, so he couldn’t make that contract to begin with.”
