Fake therapist fooled hundreds of people online, until she died.

– Advertisement –

Brett Kelman

July 2, 2024

Hundreds of Americans may have unknowingly received psychotherapy from an unskilled fraudster posing as an online therapist, according to Florida Health Department records. He may have done so for as long as two years. It wasn’t until she died that the scam disappeared.

Peggy A. Randolph, a social worker licensed in Florida and Tennessee who previously worked for Brightside Health, a national online therapy company, is accused of helping her wife pose as her during online sessions, according to an investigative report from the Florida Department of Health.

The Florida report says the couple “defrauded” patients through a “coordinated effort”: While Randolph treated patients in person, her wife posed as her during telehealth sessions with Brightside patients.

The deception came to light after the woman died last year and a patient realized he had spoken to the wrong person, according to a settlement agreement from the Tennessee Department of Health.

Documents from both states identify Randolph’s wife only by her initials, TR, but her full name appears in her obituary: Tammy G. Heath-Randolph. Therapists are generally expected to have at least a master’s degree, but Randolph’s wife was “not licensed or trained to provide any form of counseling,” the Tennessee agreement says.

“(Randolph) denies knowing that TR used her Brightside Health Therapist Portal credentials or treated clients under her account. (She) did, however, receive compensation for the sessions performed,” the agreement states.

The alleged ruse has not been previously reported and its details and scope were only recently revealed in a few pages of public documents released by state authorities.

The Tennessee settlement, unsealed in May, alleges that Randolph was required to provide online therapy to “hundreds of clients” while working for Brightside Health from January 2021 to February 2023. However, an internal Brightside investigation found that it was actually Heath-Randolph who “saw all of her patients and had been doing so for a significant period of time,” according to the Florida investigation report.

Randolph declined to comment.

The Florida and Tennessee records say Randolph voluntarily surrendered her social worker licenses in both states. That caused health officials to drop their investigation, limiting the details of the case and the documents available in the public record. Brightside’s internal investigation report has not been made public.

Brightside Health, a San Francisco company that offers online psychiatry and therapy sessions nationwide, declined to make an official available for an interview.

Company spokeswoman Hannah Changi said in an email that once Brightside became aware of the allegations, it conducted a security review, fired Randolph and reported her to state licensing authorities.

Changi said Brightside could not say how many patients Randolph’s wife had seen “due to the nature of the incident and ongoing legal proceedings” but said the company had notified and reimbursed all “potentially affected patients”.

“We take our patient experience seriously and are committed to a high code of ethics,” Changi said. “We are extremely disappointed that a single provider was willing to violate the trust that Brightside and, more importantly, its patients, had placed in it.”

Brightside also had to alert the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which investigates data breaches that exposed private medical information. In that breach, an “unauthorized individual” accessed the information of 767 people, including Social Security numbers and diagnoses, according to the agency’s online database.

Neither Florida nor Tennessee health authorities responded to questions about the case.

Dean Flener, spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Health, said the details of Randolph’s case remain confidential under state law.

Jae Williams, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Health, said a full investigation has not been completed because Randolph surrendered her license, which has the same effect as having her license revoked by the state but allows her to retain “whatever dignity she had left.”

Because the therapies are covered by insurance companies in the United States, this type of scam can generate large sums of money over a long period of time.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom producing in-depth journalism on health issues and is one of the key operational programs at KFF, an independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

– Advertisement –