A state legislature in Missouri was accused this week of connection to a fraud scheme in which she said she could use stem cells to treat Covid-19 patients at her medical clinics, prosecutors said.
The lawmaker, Rep. Tricia Derges, a Republican, was stripped of her duties on the committee in the State House on Monday, the same day that a 20-count charge against her was filed in the United States District Court in Springfield, Missouri .
And on Wednesday the mayor of Missouri, also a Republican, asked the first-term legislator, who pleaded not guilty, to resign.
Prosecutors say Dr. Derges, a licensed assistant physician, raised nearly $ 200,000 from patients at three medical clinics she operates for injections of amniotic fluid that she falsely claimed to contain stem cells.
A month after the coronavirus outbreak was declared a global pandemic, Dr. Derges said in a Facebook post that the injections could help patients with symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, according to the prosecution.
“This incredible treatment offers a potential cure for patients with COVID-19 that is safe and natural,” said the prosecution Dr. Derges in the post. “All the components of the God-given amniotic fluid: Mesenchymal stem cells (progenitor stem cells that are baby stem cells: they can become any tissue they want); cytokines, exosomes, chemokines, hyaluronic acid, growth factors and more than 800 proteins working to create a human being: the emphasis on the lungs ”.
The National Institutes of Health last year recommended against using mesenchymal stem cells to treat Covid-19, except in clinical trials. They also noted that the Food and Drug Administration has issued several warnings that patients may be vulnerable to stem cell treatments that are illegal and potentially harmful.
According to his biography on his legislative website, the clinics operated by Dr. Derges are primary and urgent care centers for “workers and uninsured” in underserved areas of southwest Missouri.
The fraud scheme started in December 2018 and continued until May 2020, according to the prosecution, which claimed that Dr. Derges had promoted the regenerative medical benefits of injections for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Lyme disease, erectile dysfunction, urinary incontinence and other conditions.
“This defendant abused his privileged position to get rich through deception,” said Tim Garrison, the US attorney for the Western District of Missouri, in a statement. “As an elected official and provider of health services, she deserves to be considered a high standard.”
Dr. Derges, 63, of Nixa, Missouri, has also been accused of illegally supplying prescription drugs oxycodone and Adderall to clients at her three medical clinics in Ozarks, southwest Missouri, in addition to lying to federal investigators.
Stacie Calhoun Bilyeu, Derges’ lawyer, said in an interview late on Wednesday that the public was rushing to convict his client before she received the day in court.
“My client started receiving death threats,” said Bilyeu. “Someone told her they expected her to die by lethal injection.”
Bilyeu declined to discuss the details of the case, including government claims that Derges charged patients up to six times more than she paid for the allograft of amniotic fluid that did not contain stem cells.
Dr. Derges received a medical degree from Caribbean Medical University in Curaçao in 2014, but was not accepted into a graduate residency program, according to the prosecution. In 2017, she became a licensed medical assistant in Missouri and was authorized to prescribe drugs the following year, the prosecution said.
Prosecutors said that Dr. Derges illegally provided prescription drugs to patients of other doctors at their clinics who were not authorized to prescribe controlled substances.
On Monday, Dr. Derges, who was elected for her first two-year term in 2020, was removed from her duties on the Health and Mental Health Policy Committee, along with the Professional Registration and Licensing Committee and the Committee Special for Small Businesses.
She was dismissed by order of Representative Rob Vescovo, Mayor of Missouri and fellow Republican.
“After speaking with her and the caucus, I am asking her to resign her seat in the Chamber,” said Vescovo in a statement on Wednesday. “The legal process will ultimately determine her guilt or innocence, but this is clearly a time for her to spend with her family while she focuses on her legal issues, and for the people of the 140th District to move forward with selecting a replacement that can effectively defend your interests. “