Jennifer Hess, 50, Pleads Guilty to Opioid Fraud Scheme

Jennifer Hess, 50, of Washington, PA, stood before a federal judge and admitted to fueling the opioid epidemic through her clinics across Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. She pleaded guilty to three felony counts, including aiding and abetting the unlawful distribution of controlled substances and health care fraud, sealing her fate in a case that exposed systemic corruption in addiction treatment.

Hess owned and operated Redirections Treatment Advocates LLC (RTA), a so-called recovery hub with locations in Washington and Bridgeville, PA, and Morgantown, Weirton, and Moundsville, WV. Instead of healing the addicted, investigators say Hess turned her clinics into pill mills, where prescriptions for buprenorphine—commonly known as Subutex and Suboxone—were forged, pre-signed, and filled without medical oversight.

Court documents reveal Hess personally completed blank prescriptions and forged doctors’ names to push the powerful opioid blockers to patients who often didn’t need them. The scheme wasn’t just dangerous—it was lucrative. She orchestrated the submission of fraudulent claims to Medicaid and Medicare, defrauding federal health programs to line her own pockets.

The Western Pennsylvania Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit (OFADU), a joint federal-state task force, uncovered the operation after months of forensic auditing and undercover work. This unit, led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, has become the nation’s top enforcer against corrupt medical professionals exploiting the opioid crisis.

Hess now faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1,250,000 fine when sentenced by U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab on October 30, 2019, at 10 a.m. The actual sentence will hinge on the severity of her crimes and any prior record, though prosecutors are pushing for maximum accountability.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert S. Cessar and Michael L. Ivory are leading the prosecution. The investigation involved a sprawling coalition: FBI, DEA, HHS-OIG, IRS-CI, Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, FDA-Criminal Investigations, and multiple federal inspector general offices—proof that when greed masquerades as medicine, the crackdown is total.