KINGSTON — The investigation into a medical fraud case in Luzerne County continues, after two former doctors were targeted in a raid at their Kingston home.
Agents from the Luzerne County district attorney’s office conducted that raid Tuesday afternoon.
The two former doctors have not been charged.
But records show one has a criminal past, both have documented evidence of trouble with prescription drugs. And both were stripped of their medical licenses in the past decade.
Agents from the Luzerne County district attorney`s office seized records from the home of two ex-doctors in Kingston, late Tuesday afternoon. The two happen to be brother and sister.
The brother is David Rigle, once a licensed pathologist.
Almost 20 years ago, Rigle made news claiming he had scientific information about the 1991 poisoning death of Robert Curley of Wilkes-Barre.
Robert’s wife Joann Curley was indicted in 1996, then pleaded guilty to third-degree homicide. Rigle’s information was never a part of the case.
Just before getting involved in the Curley case, Rigle was fired from his job as a deputy county coroner in Syracuse, New York, and often freelanced as an expert witness at trials in Luzerne County.
According to a report from the New York Department of Health, ,that agency suspended Rigle`s medical license three times for substance abuse issues between 1991 and 2005.
Rigle was never licensed to practice in Pennsylvania.
New York’s department of health permanently revoked his license in 2009 citing incidents where he was found to be a, “…habitual user of alcohol…narcotics…(and had) severe depression and an inability to function.”
The report also cited evidence that he fed his prescription drug habit by going to several doctors and pharmacies.
Rigle`s sister Deborah McMenamin, lost her medical license in Pennsylvania in 2002.
“I have nothing to say right now,” said McMenamin after meeting with police.
Records show that in 1999, this former surgeon pleaded guilty in federal court to “theft of government property”, and “…writing prescriptions for (the pain killing narcotic) hydrocodine, knowing it was not for a legitimate purpose other than selling individual tablets to persons who had no medical need.”
McMenamin received a two-year suspended sentence.
McMenamin and Rigle have not been charged.
The Luzerne County district attorney’s office will only confirm Tuesday’s raid resulted from a criminal investigation in which the two former doctors are suspected of bilking a man out of $20,000 to provide expertise in a possible malpractice case.
