Making a practice of posing

Andrew Michael was an imposter on a grand scale for years in Las Vegas — posing as a lawyer, a commercial jet pilot and a nursing student.

In 2003, he was in Lexington, pursuing a new profession as a medical student at St. Luke School of Medicine, an online medical and naturopathy school with operations in Liberia, but no U.S. accreditation.

Michael — whose deceit has been compared by investigators to that of Frank Abagnale Jr., the man portrayed in the movie Catch Me if You Can -- even ran for a seat in the Nevada legislature.

But, in his most disturbing move, he practiced medicine without a license in Las Vegas for two years before coming to Kentucky, said Gerald J. Gardner, Nevada's chief deputy attorney general.

While posing as a doctor there, Michael, 38, gave medical advice and supervised potentially dangerous radioactive injections for MRI patients. He told people that he had completed a residency in cardiothoracic surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and trained at several medical schools, according to a court affidavit.

He never attended Johns Hopkins or any other medical school.

At about the time his employees in Nevada began to doubt that he was really a doctor, Michael became a student at an Internet medical school promoted by Stephen J. Arnett from the tiny town of Falcon, Ky. Arnett arranged Michael's placement with Lexington doctors.

In 2003, Arnett sent Michael to Lexington to observe at Central Baptist Hospital as part of his training. One of the heart specialists he observed was Dr. Hal Skinner. Arnett and Skinner knew each other because Arnett had once rented office space to Skinner at an Eastern Kentucky medical clinic.

Ruth Ann Childers, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said it was not unusual at the time for physicians to allow students from foreign medical schools to observe.

Dr. Robert Mitchell, a heart surgeon at Central Baptist, said he allowed Michael to observe him for four days as a favor to another doctor.

"He was not allowed to participate in surgery other than to observe," Mitchell said. From the first day of the rotation, Mitchell said he could see that Michael had far less knowledge than most medical students. The doctor sent Michael to the library to study, and told hospital officials about his concerns.

Then word came that Michael had been indicted in Nevada.

"He might have been able to fool people in Nevada, but he didn't fool anybody in Kentucky," said Mitchell.

But Central Baptist officials were still shocked to find that there might be a problem with St. Luke.

Dr. Jerroll Dolphin, president of St. Luke, had visited the hospital and taken up residence in Lexington for three months. St. Luke didn't appear to be any different than any other foreign medical school, Mitchell said.

Although Michael's criminal charges had nothing to do with his activities in Lexington, Central Baptist changed its rules. It now allows only medical students from the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and Pikeville College School of Osteopathic Medicine.

Michael treated no patients at Central Baptist and did not have access to patient records, according to Childers. No patients were affected in any way, she said, and Michael spent a total of only five days at the hospital.

"There's no evidence that he did anything improper" in Lexington, she said.

But, in Nevada, "Mr. Michael's behavior was incredibly dangerous and put the health and safety of numerous Nevadans at risk," said Attorney General Brian Sandoval.

Arnett and Dolphin

Arnett, who'd referred Michael to Central Baptist, had himself received a "medical degree" from St. Luke, promoted the school and was listed at one point as its vice president. Arnett declined to comment or respond to questions for this article. The man he said was his attorney did not return telephone calls.

Dolphin said that Arnett did arrange clinical rotations in Kentucky for St. Luke students, and was very helpful. However, at some point, "we suspected that he was issuing diplomas in the name of St. Luke ... without authority," he said. "We severed our relationship with him," Dolphin said, and withdrew Arnett's "honorary degree" from the school.

Arnett's association with the school ended in late 2003. He currently has a license to practice acupuncture from West Virginia and calls himself a doctor of "Oriental Medicine."

Among the many medical circles Arnett was part of was a Kentucky task force that looked at the regulation of naturopathy in the late 1990s.

Arnett has never been convicted of a crime associated with his medical activities. The Kentucky attorney general's office is looking into how the Internet schools he was involved with operated and awarded degrees in the state.

A 'shell game'

Nevada prosecutors were skeptical of St. Luke's authenticity, according to the 2003 indictment of Michael.

"The defendant is not a legitimate student attempting to further his education. His medical school education is a shell game in which St. Luke is likely an accomplice," the indictment said.

"While there is no way of knowing what actual course work defendant has taken at St. Luke, it is clear that there is little if any academic oversight of Mr. Michael's schoolwork."

Nevada prosecutors found that the school with ties to Kentucky said it was based in the African country of Liberia and, for a time, had an informational office in California.

Dolphin said in a telephone interview from Liberia that Michael was a student at St. Luke, but after news of his Nevada indictment, he left the school. "We suspected that his transcripts were generated by a 'diploma mill,'" Dolphin said. A diploma mill or degree mill is usually defined as an institution that gives degrees for money and little work.

Some states have listed St. Luke as a diploma mill. Dolphin defended the quality of education that his school provides.

Dolphin said both the course of study and the practical experience are intensive and his school is not a diploma mill.

"St. Luke School of Medicine has never sold diplomas in exchange for money and a simple quiz, and never will," he said.

After Michael pleaded guilty to one felony count of attempting to practice medicine without a license in Nevada, he told the court: "I know there are no shortcuts in life. If given a second chance, I want to make my family proud of me and go to school the traditional way."

Judge Valorie Vega ordered that Michael be put in jail immediately. He served six months and was sentenced to four years of supervised probation.

Michael blamed St. Luke.

"I attempted to go to a medical school that I thought was above-board and honest; obviously they weren't," Michael told the judge.

But she didn't think that excused Michael's behavior.

"This was a time bomb ticking," she said. Michael's practice posed "a huge risk to human life."

In 2005, Michael hired a well-known Las Vegas attorney, John Momot, and asked the court for permission to withdraw his guilty plea.

"I am a victim of a medical school that was not legitimate," Michael argued in an appeal. Dolphin agreed that Michael had been a student at St. Luke, but said he was dismissed after his indictment.

The Nevada court of appeals upheld Michael's conviction in July.

In August, Michael was in trouble again, this time for violating his probation. He was charged in federal court in Las Vegas with bank fraud, one count of false statement on a credit-card application and criminal forfeiture.

Michael, his wife and mother defrauded Citibank of $8.5 million using false financial records, according to the indictment. He is currently in jail in Las Vegas. The Nevada attorney general's office has asked that he serve the remainder of his four-year prison sentence.

An Oct. 16 trial is scheduled on the bank fraud charges.

'A doctor's lifestyle'

One of Michael's fellow students at St. Luke was Larry Lammers, 51, a chiropractor who came to Kentucky after he lost his license in Florida and was recruited to the online school by Arnett.

Lammers saw an education at St. Luke as the best way to regain his country-club lifestyle after he had to give up his Florida chiropractor's license.

"I'm used to living a doctor's lifestyle," he said in an interview with the Herald-Leader from the Fayette County Detention Center in 2005.

But in 2001, Lammers began having financial problems with MRI centers he owned in Orlando. He had also been convicted of practicing medicine there without a license. Lammers said the whole thing was a misunderstanding that stemmed from treating his own family.

Greg Mack, a friend from Orlando, said that he hired Lammers to work in the billing department of his Florida clinic and then brought him to Kentucky to work at a chain of neck and back centers called Accident Injury Medical Centers.

Mack said he had concluded that baseless charges had been brought against Lammers in Florida after disgruntled former employees complained, he told the Herald-Leader.

He never intended for Lammers to treat patients, Mack said in a deposition he gave in one of six lawsuits filed against the two men by patients treated at the Kentucky centers.

Lammers' job at Accident Injury centers -- whose locations included London, Lexington, Pikeville, Paintsville, Somerset and Hazard -- was to get payment for insurance claims that had been denied, according to Mack.

When Arnett came to one of the Kentucky clinics to offer to help with marketing, he told Lammers that he could help him get a medical degree at St. Luke School of Medicine, where he was the vice president.

Lammers was accepted as an online student in 2002 at St. Luke, where his education cost him about $20,000, he said in a deposition.

St. Luke's online curriculum was so tough that he studied 18 hours a day for several months, he said.

Arnett told Lammers that because of his previous experience, he could become a third-year medical student and treat patients under a doctor's supervision.

Lammers contended that he always worked under the supervision of a licensed physician at the clinics. Fellow staffers called him "Dr." out of respect, he said, because he had once been a chiropractor. However, he contended that his nametags said "student" or "intern."

Mack said he hired Louisville lawyer Robert Riley, a former attorney for the Kentucky Department of Human Resources, who advised him that as a medical student Lammers could perform tasks such as giving injections.

But, in a 2006 deposition, Riley said that he never told Lammers or Mack that it was OK for Lammers to practice medicine.

Kentucky law is unclear about what medical students can and cannot do in clinics, said Riley, who described Lammers as a "loose cannon" who exaggerated.

Many medical roles

Depositions from former colleagues contend that Lammers often failed to take direction from supervising physicians. In fact, he acted as a supervisor for other St. Luke medical students who came to the center for rotations, according to doctors who worked with him.

Arnett and Lammers essentially worked out a complicated scenario in which they proposed to supervise each other and exchange titles at the centers.

Both men fulfilled multiple roles:

* Arnett was to be a contract employee at Accident Injury centers in Pikeville and Paintsville, working as a certified medical assistant. But Mack said that Arnett never treated any patients and ended up working only three days.

* According to one document, however, Arnett intended to "perform duties of an integrated medical doctor, alternative medicine, massage, acupuncture, and kinesiology as deemed necessary to treat patients."

* Arnett's agreement with the centers said he had an M.D., but was not licensed to practice medicine.

* While Lammers was studying at St. Luke, he was also acting as a supervising professor at the school and as a director of Accident Injury centers.

By mid-2003, Lammers was indicted for practicing medicine without a license at a center in Somerset. He was found guilty of one count of wanton endangerment and received one year's probation.

In 2004, Mack's Accident Injury business was fined $90,000 by a state administrative law judge who said it illegally operated at least eight clinics in Kentucky. The fine is the largest ever levied in the state because a clinic avoided getting a license.

Mack said state officials told him and his attorney, Riley, that he didn't need a license. Not long after that, he said, they reversed their decision.

'No remorse'

Lammers left Kentucky after his guilty plea and went to Michigan to continue his St. Luke studies, guided by his physician father.

But in 2004, Lammers was once again charged with practicing medicine without a license -- this time in Michigan. Prosecutors said he treated at least seven patients at the office of his father, Dr. Gerald Lammers, while the elder Lammers was in California.

"I find you have no remorse," said Judge Joseph A. Costello Jr.

Lammers was sentenced to one year in jail, received five years' probation, was fined $1,500 and ordered to pay $900 in court costs.

When that news reached Lexington, more than a dozen patients at a Lexington Accident Injury center came forward to complain to Fayette County Attorney Margaret Kannensohn that they had been treated by Lammers.

Lammers was charged with practicing medicine without a license and sentenced to 180 days in the Fayette County Detention Center in 2005.

Six former patients in Kentucky have since sued Lammers and Mack. One of them, Susan Kidd, told Kannensohn that Lammers gave her injections and other treatments.

Another plaintiff, Jessie Osborne, said he also believed that he was being treated by a physician. At the Accident Injury center, Lammers "gave me injections above my eye, in the back of my head, my spine and legs," he said in a deposition.

The civil lawsuits against Lammers are pending in Fayette Circuit Court.

A doctor of divinity

Lammers contends that he was justified in his actions, and called his pursuit of a medical degree through an Internet school "the wave of the future."

He would never have been criminally charged in Kentucky or Michigan if prosecutors had investigated St. Luke and observed the quality education he received, he said.

"If we had been defrauding, it would be one thing," said Lammers. "But we haven't. We just learn in a different way.

"If you don't read and do research, you won't pass," he said of St. Luke. "If it was a diploma mill, I missed out on the mill."

After St. Luke was denounced as issuing fraudulent degrees in 2005 by prosecutors in the United States, Lammers indicated that he was still a student there.

"I've completed all the curriculum," he said.

Dolphin agreed, saying that St. Luke will consider whether to give Lammers a degree when school officials are sure his criminal troubles are over.

Lammers currently has a Web page on MySpace that says he lives in Ida, Mich., and recently received a doctor of divinity degree.

St. Luke students observe and practice

Andrew E. Michael

• 2003: Observed heart specialists at Lexington's Central Baptist Hospital.

• 2005: Sentenced to six months in jail and four years of probation in Nevada for practicing medicine without a license.

• 2006: In jail in Nevada on federal credit-card charges.

Larry Lammers

• 2004: Worked at Accident Injury centers in Kentucky.

• 2005: Sentenced to 180 days in Fayette County Detention Center for practicing medicine without a license.

• 2006: MySpace.com profile says he is a retired physician living in Ida, Mich.

News researcher Linda Niemi contributed to this article.

Reach Valarie Honeycutt Spears at (859) 231-3409 or 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 3409, or vhoneycutt@herald-leader.com.