From rising star to drug death, Toms River recovery coach fleeced the system, state says

John Brogan, the Toms River addiction recovery specialist who was lauded by public officials only to die of a drug overdose in 2020, used his high-profile relationships with law enforcement and politicians to defraud the criminal justice system and line his own pockets, the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation said Tuesday in a statewide report documenting widespread corruption in the drug treatment industry.

Brogan, who worked with the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office and Monmouth County Sheriff's Office to find clients to send to treatment programs, was prominently featured in the SCI's 45-page report on patient brokering, questionable financial practices and other misconduct in the addiction recovery business.

The report said Brogan was paid almost $600,000 by more than 20 drug treatment facilities between 2017 and 2018 for referring patients to them while also charging the unwitting patients amounts ranging from $250 to $30,000 to "help them navigate the recovery process and enter treatment,'' the report said.

The commission's investigation confirmed allegations made in a whistleblower lawsuit by a former, high-ranking official in the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office that Brogan engaged in potentially illegal activity including extorting clients, encouraging one of them to relapse into drug use so she could qualify for a treatment program and sending probationers to out-of-state facilities in violation of court orders.

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The report also said Brogan was paid by a Pennsylvania treatment facility partly owned by a convicted criminal to recruit patients from the Monmouth County Jail through a program with the Monmouth County Sheriff's Office, although sheriff's officials were unaware of the part-owner's criminal background.

The SCI report did not mention Brogan's own criminal record for theft-by-deception in 2010, as a result of his admission to stealing more than $17,000 from clients at a mortgage company.

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The commission's in-depth investigation found that corrupt business owners, operators and professionals across the addiction rehabilitation industry in New Jersey manipulated clients through fraudulent schemes and other misconduct, at times hindering their clients' efforts to get sober. The report made recommendations including strengthening and expanding patient brokering laws, enacting legislation to target deceptive marketing practices and creating a state licensure system for peer recovery coaches.

Brogan came upon the addiction recovery scene when opioid abuse was spiking in New Jersey and throughout the state, the report said. Brogan opened his business, Recovery Solutions doing business as Lifeline Recovery Services, in Toms River in 2016, it said.

"If there was such a thing as a rising star within the addiction rehabilitation industry in New Jersey, John Brogan was it,'' the report said. "He also set the gold standard for how to work the system to his advantage.''

Brogan, a heroin addict turned self-proclaimed addiction recovery specialist, was a frequent speaker and panelist at events throughout the state, often sitting beside respected experts, judges and politicians, the report said.

"Former Governor Chris Christie publicly lauded him for his work helping victims struggling with addiction to get clean,'' it said.

The report noted that Brogan was often pictured in online photographs posing with top state law enforcement officials and even members of Congress at venues that included the White House.

"The Commission found Brogan exploited his high-profile relationships to gain access to clients and advance his own financial interests, defrauding the criminal justice system along the way and creating a model used by other peer recovery coaches in New Jersey to engage in brokering-like conduct as recently as 2022,'' the report said.

At Lifeline, Brogan sometimes assisted Medicaid patients and those without insurance, but derived no profit from them, the report pointed out. He focused mostly on patients with private health insurance, it said.

"Those clients were the ones Brogan would send to treatment centers that - unbeknownst to the client - were also paying him simultaneously,'' the report said.

Brogan worked for the treatment centers, most of which were located outside of New Jersey, in consulting and salaried positions in job titles that included words such as "marketing'' and "outreach,'' the report said.

Brogan's first partnership with law enforcement was in 2017 with Belmar police, with whom he helped to create the Blue HART (Heroin Addiction Response Team) program. The program, which was replicated with the prosecutor's offices in Ocean and Monmouth counties, was designed to get treatment for defendants charged with nonviolent crimes.

Brogan also launched the "Next Step Program,'' modeled after the Blue HART program, with the Monmouth County Sheriff's Office, to get drug treatment for inmates at the county jail, the report said.

"Even though the Sheriff's Office already had a program helping place Monmouth County Correctional Institute inmates into treatment, Brogan allegedly claimed he could obtain services for them more quickly and without the need to wait for beds to become available,'' the report said.

The commission's investigation found that an outpatient treatment facility in Westchester, Pennsylvania, was paying the salaries of the Lifeline recovery coaches who were going into the jail to meet with potential patients.

"The treatment center, which has since closed its doors, was owned in part by a Florida resident with a prior conviction for mail and wire fraud,'' the commission's report said. "This individual attended meetings with Brogan and the Sheriff's Office, yet personnel with the Sheriff's Office were unclear as to his role and unaware of his criminal history.''

The report did not name the part-owner of the Pennsylvania facility.

However, it said the owners of the Pennsylvania treatment center paid Brogan $266,000 over six months to send inmates with private insurance policies from the jail to the treatment center. But, the center terminated its agreement with Brogan after receiving only one client in six months because most of the inmates had Medicaid insurance, the report said.

The Sheriff's Office did not have a contract with Brogan or Lifeline, had no policies or procedures to oversee the arrangement and kept no statistics on the program, the report said.

Victor Iannello, warden at the Monmouth County Jail, responded to a request for comment made to the Monmouth County Sheriff's Office.

"The goal of recovery is to provide a secure path to a healthy lifestyle and reduce the rate of recidivism,'' Iannello said in his written response.

"Mr. Brogan's services did not do that at MCCI, since the program offered out-of state-treatment, resulting in its termination,'' Iannello said. "The Monmouth County Correctional Institution prides itself on the manner in which recovery is approached and is successful in creating a new lifestyle for inmates after they serve their sentences and receive proper recovery treatment.''

The CSI report said that around the time the Monmouth County Sheriff's Office parted ways with Brogan, allegations of potential illegal activity by him surfaced in a lawsuit filed in August 2018 by a high-ranking assistant Ocean County prosecutor who claimed he was fired after bringing the allegations to then-Prosecutor Joseph Coronato, who had a high-profile relationship with Brogan in the fight against opioids.

The lawsuit alleged that Brogan extorted clients, encouraged one young woman to use drugs to gain admittance to a treatment program and sent others on probation to out-of-state treatment facilities in violation of court orders.

The former assistant prosecutor, Michel A. Paulhus, who was third in command at the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, was paid more than $1 million in 2022 to settle his lawsuit against Coronato and the prosecutor's office. The defendants made no acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

However, the commission's report said the claims made in the lawsuit "mirrored investigative findings subsequently made by the SCI.''

Coronato, who told the Asbury Park Press in 2018 that Paulhus' allegations were "completely unfounded,'' did not return a phone call seeking comment on the SCI report.

Paulhus declined to comment on the report.

Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer said in response to the CSI report, "The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office has not had any relationship with John Brogan since the day I took office in October of 2018.''

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Paulhus' lawsuit, expounding on claims that Brogan sent a probationer out of state for treatment in violation of a court order, said an assistant of Brogan first took the probationer to illegally obtain and ingest a controlled dangerous substance so she would test positive for drug use and gain entry into the Florida rehabilitation facility. Brogan assured the probationer's parents that her leaving the state wouldn't be a problem, the lawsuit said. He later told the woman's parents he would not explain her absence from New Jersey to the probation department until he received payment and a signed contract from them, the suit said.

Brogan, after the lawsuit was filed, said the allegations in it were "simply untrue.''

Several people who worked for Brogan later testified before the CSI that there were other clients he misled about the rules of probation.

"The witnesses testified he never informed the court after arranging for the clients' attendance at treatment centers outside of the state - violating the terms of their probation - even after reassuring them he would do so,'' the SCI report said. "Some clients did not learn there was a warrant for their arrest for violating probation until they returned home to New Jersey.

"Former employees also told the Commission that Brogan gave preferential treatment to clients with familial connections to law enforcement officials or personal relationships with him,'' the report said. "Sometimes the legal protocols for matters related to those clients in the county jails and courts, they testified, were manipulated, bypassed or ignored.''

One example of that involved a client whose father had a long business relationship with Brogan, the report said. That person was accepted into the Next Step Program and given a treatment plan to be overseen by Lifeline and submitted to prosecutors and the court.

Weeks into the program, as the client was struggling to adhere to the treatment plan, he posted a video online of him drinking vodka, the CSI report said.

The client failed to follow numerous parts of his treatment plan, never attended his outpatient treatment program and rarely showed up at Lifeline for family therapy sessions, the report said. There also was no indication he ever underwent court-mandated urine tests to check for drug or alcohol use, it said.

"Despite all this, in October 2018, Lifeline sent a letter to the courts advising the client was sober and had complied with the terms of his probation, with no mention of any problems,'' the report said. "The former client was subsequently hired as a recovery coach at Lifeline.''

It wasn't long afterward that Brogan was found dead of a drug overdose in a Philadelphia hotel on July 29, 2020, the report noted. Brogan was 42.

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A year earlier, Brogan had testified before the Commission, saying that the expectations of treatment centers about patient referrals were not explicit in written job offers, but that the practice was well-entrenched in the industry, the report said.

"I don't think a client should ever be sent there for a form of payment,'' Brogan told the commission, according to the report. "However, as I've gone through this process, the entire industry is built on that, from the hospital to the treatment center to the grant-funded organizations. It's all based on that client coming through the door.''

The commission report, which documented other instances of corruption and misconduct in the industry throughout the state, also said the investigation found that an owner of a treatment center in Monmouth County operated several unlicensed sober homes in the region to house clients of his rehabilitation facility. They included a residence in Old Bridge from which clients were transported by van to the treatment center.

The report did not name the owner of the treatment center.

The commission found that the dining room at the Old Bridge residence was improperly converted into a makeshift bedroom, and that medication was being dispensed there by a behavioral technician, in violation of the rules for the operation of sober homes.

A former resident at another sober home in Keansburg operated by the same person complained he was evicted in February 2022 for allegedly switching addiction treatment services from the owner's rehabilitation facility to another provider, the report said.

The commission in its report also recommended stricter state regulation of sober homes.

Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khopkins@app.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Dead Toms River recovery coach John Brogan fleeced the system - report