The FBI is now involved with an investigation into out-of-state recruiters who have been luring Bangor residents to luxury addiction treatment centers, according to Bangor police.
“I can confirm that BPD is looking into the information reported to us along with the FBI,” Sgt. Jeremy Brock told the Bangor Daily News Tuesday.
The FBI’s involvement comes after the BDN reported last week that recruiters have been offering plane tickets and other freebies to homeless people to entice them to enroll in addiction treatment services in California.
Bangor police received several reports about these recruiters and assigned a detective to investigate but does not have any missing persons reports related to the complaints, Brock previously told the BDN. He said Tuesday he could not answer specific questions about the investigation or the FBI’s role in it.
The FBI declined to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation, spokesperson Kristen Setera said.
Brock said that to his knowledge, “no one at the Bangor Police Department has said we are investigating human trafficking,” despite reports claiming otherwise.
One company offering out-of-state services to Bangor residents, The Rehab Specialist, has operated in other places across the country and has been accused of insurance fraud and sending people to treatment centers that provide inadequate care, although there’s no evidence that this has occurred in Maine.
The Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018 made it a federal crime to offer “any remuneration” to a person in exchange for participating in treatment services or in exchange for referring people to services, although there are exceptions.
The Rehab Specialist has been operating in Bangor and Portland on and off for the last couple of months, Gus Tarrant, the company’s CEO, previously told the BDN.
Another person recruited at least one individual at The Well warming center in February using business cards with the name Allen that read “elevated recovery through luxury care.” Tarrant said this person is unrelated to The Rehab Specialist.