A woman federal prosecutors say was not a licensed naturopathic doctor but claimed to be was sentenced to more than six years in prison today after operating a string of holistic medical practices that included a clinic on Johnson Ferry Road.
Isabel Kesari Gervais, 61, received a 75-month sentence from a federal judge in Birmingham. She pleaded guilty last summer to wire fraud, identity theft and making false statements. As part of her sentence, she also must forfeit $108,146 in proceeds from that illegal activity, according to a release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for North Alabama.
While the charges stemmed from a case in Alabama, Gervais also ran naturopathic clinics in Arkansas, Kansas and Georgia over the last 15 years. Federal prosecutors said that in addition to defrauding patients, she also changed her identity numerous times and ran advertisements making claims for medical services she was not licensed to offer, including cancer treatment.
From 2004 and 2008, Gervais ran The Chiron Clinic at 1000 Johnson Ferry Road, across from Johnson Ferry Baptist Church. According to a federal sentencing memo, Gervais, who went by the name Debrah Lynn Goodman at the time, fell behind on her rent at the East Cobb business in 2005, and in February and March of that year, “the leasing company began seriously demanding payment.”
The memo said she legally changed her name to Isabell Gervais in April 2005 and left for Alabama following a divorce.
She returned to Georgia in 2009 to open a clinic in the Cumberland area, the same year a local magazine ad carried the headline “Dr. Isabell Heals Mind, Body and Spirit in East Cobb.”
She moved to Arkansas and Kansas before relocating again to the Birmingham area in 2015. That’s where she started a clinic promising medical services to cancer patients, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office there, although she wasn’t licensed to practice medicine.
Prosecutors said received payment from a woman seeking cancer treatment, but did not provide the needed medical services. With other patients, they said she conducted a few tests and wrote out a few prescriptions, and “through her misrepresentations about licensure and qualifications, fraudulently induced patients to pay her thousands of dollars.”
Prosecutors said during her 15-year spree, Gervais changed personal names, business names, medical practices and abandoned rental properties, all in an effort “to avoid legal action and detection.”
“The word ‘doctor’ means something,” assistant U.S. attorney Erica Barnes Williamson said in the sentencing order. “Diplomas on a wall signal something. Licensure, references in publications, and referrals are important. As a society, we rely on these things to determine who to trust with our health and with our money. The court must send the message that it is not okay to simply make it all up.”
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