Fake Doctor Admits To Running Cruelest Of Scams For 15 Years

MARIETTA, GA — For more than 15 years, Isabel Kesari Gervais treated patients with serious medical conditions, including cancer, in clinics she set up in Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas and Georgia. She presented impressive credentials to desperate patients, telling them that as a doctor specializing in naturopathy, she would use natural therapies to foster the self-healing process.

Gervais, though, was not a doctor. She was a scam artist who pedaled hope to the sick for her own profit. Before being arrested in March, she swindled patients by pretending to be a doctor, and boasted about her awards and experience, which were just as fake as the medical license she claimed to have earned.

She pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Alabama to one count of wire fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft and one count of making false statements.

Gervais, 60, who went by the alias Dr. Rose Starr, ran the Chiron Clinic in Marietta as well as DRI Enterprises in Atlanta and then hopped to locations in Arkansas, Kansas and Alabama to maintain her ruse, according to a news release from Acting U.S. Attorney Robert Posey of Alabama and U.S. Postal Inspector Frank Dyer, who investigated the case. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. Or if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app.)

“At all the clinics, Gervais falsely represented herself as a licensed doctor with extensive experience and various degrees who used naturopathic medicine to cure people of various illnesses, including cancer,” the release said.

Gervais ran phony tests and prescribed treatment, charging thousands of dollars for her services.

“For years this defendant lied about her credentials and took advantage of desperately ill people,” Posey said. “The U.S. Postal Inspection Service did great work in uncovering this fraud and finding the evidence to make this case.”

Gervais' scam went largely undetected until medical boards in Alabama and Arkansas opened investigations. Even still, she continued to treat patients for serious diseases.

In addition to the Georgia locations, she ran clinics in Fayetteville and Springdale, Arkansas, as well as Leawood, Kansas, Posey said.

In 2015, she "misappropriated the identity" of two patients in Alabama, charging the credit card of one of them without consent and fraudulently setting up a post office box from the other's data.

She faces up to 37 years in prison and fines up to $1.25 million. She already agreed to forfeit $108,146 she gained from the illegal activity.

Gervais is scheduled for sentencing in November.

Image via Shelby County, Alabama Sheriff's Office