A Gatlinburg doctor twice caught over-prescribing opiates and billing taxpayer-funded and private insurance to the tune of $3.5 million in an “allergy drop” scam insisted Friday he was trying to help people.

“I’m a good doctor,” Robert Maughon told U.S. District Judge Pamela Reeves at a hearing Friday in U.S. District Court. “It wasn’t greed. Obviously, there was some mistakes made in billing. I take responsibility for it.”

But Maughon refused to admit he intentionally committed healthcare fraud, even though he — twice — struck a plea deal in the allergy drop scam. Instead, he blamed “conflicting views” on billing practices as the cause for his crime.

Allergy drops are administered under the tongue and have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Traditional allergy treatment involves injections.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bart Slabbekorn said Maughon knew the allergy drops he was billing weren’t approved by the Food and Drug Administration, knew he wasn’t providing the medical services he claimed and knew he was over-prescribing opiates and other narcotics. He was also knowingly billing for Suboxone to patients who grew addicted to the drugs he prescribed.

Slabbekorn said Maughon had been repeatedly warned by insurers not to bill for allergy drops.

'Profit and deception'

“Profit and deception,” Slabbekorn said. “Dr. Maughon stole $3.5 million in (insurance claims) … He created and fabricated out of whole cloth patient charts. There was time after time when Mr. Maughon had opportunities to come clean. His deception continues right to this very day.”

Maughon’s attorneys, Ed Holt and John Christopher Barnes, tried to convince Reeves to give Maughon probation for his two-year scheme to rip off insurance providers — and his own patients — by billing for medical services related to allergy treatment that he did not provide.

But the judge was unmoved.

“What more is it going to take for Dr. Maughon to realize (his wrongs)?” she asked. “This is a serious, serious offense and it needs to be punished (especially) when you look at his history.”

Reeves sentenced Maughon, who surrendered his medical license earlier this year, to 63 months in federal prison.

First Med founder

Maughon is the founder of First Med Inc., a chain of walk-in clinics in East Tennessee he created despite being judged guilty by the state Board of Medical Examiners in 1997 of over-prescribing opiates — well before opioid addiction turned into a deadly national epidemic. He claimed he was an addict and received treatment, so the state board did not strip his license.

First Med snared lucrative contracts to provide medical treatment to inmates at jails throughout East Tennessee, and established walk-in clinics in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Morristown. The medical care provided was so poor that some inmates died, and several county governments were forced to settle lawsuits because of it, records show.

In 2013, according to records filed by Slabbekorn and Assistant U.S. Attorney Cynthia Davidson, Maughon began setting up booths at employers' health fairs, senior centers, a tomato festival, flea markets, amusement fairs and car shows advertising free allergy testing at his mobile allergy clinics.

He specifically sought patients with insurance, including government programs, but promised the testing was free.

He used nurses and even non-medical staff to man the booths, which is forbidden under government guidelines, and lied about it in his billing.

According to his plea agreement, Maughon's staff would give patients allergy drops that the FDA had refused to approve because their effectiveness was dubious at best. Patients didn't ask for the drops, and Maughon used trickery to keep the government insurance programs from knowing he was billing them for drops, not for FDA-approved allergy treatment, Davidson alleged.

Plea, delay, plea

Maughon struck a deal to plead guilty in 2017 but later admitted he only intended to try to delay his case, not confess guilt. In mid-May, one of his employees expressed frustration on Facebook at the lack of information on the status of the case.

The next day, Maughon showed up at a Gatlinburg bar the employee frequents and repeatedly insisted all records from his clinics had been destroyed in the historic Gatlinburg wildfires that claimed 14 lives — and and his employee’s home — in late 2016. The employee said he told Maughon those records were stored “on the cloud” and later alerted authorities that he believed Maughon was trying to convince him to lie.

It was only then, faced with a possible indictment for obstruction of justice, that Maughon finally agreed to sign a plea agreement admitting his crimes.

Tony Maffei, a special agent with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General, testified authorities have learned that Maughon again began over-prescribing opiates in 2011 and continued to do so through 2015.

He has not been charged with that crime but instead agreed to surrender his medical license to avoid further scrutiny, Maffei testified.

Maughon insisted at Friday’s hearing he believed the allergy drops helped his patients — no matter what the FDA said about their efficacy. But Maffei said he didn’t find a single patient who said they benefited from the drops.

“I didn’t speak to anyone who was a success story,” he testified.