Prosecutors: Wynnewood doctor helped friend defraud Social Security
Federal prosecutors Friday unsealed an indictment charging a Wynnewood doctor with Social Security fraud. Frederick Douglas Burton, 67, of the Burton Wellness & Injury Center on City Avenue in Wynnewood, has been charged with two counts of mail fraud and attempted mail fraud.
Federal prosecutors Friday unsealed an indictment charging a Wynnewood doctor with Social Security fraud.
Frederick Douglas Burton, 67, of the Burton Wellness & Injury Center on City Avenue in Wynnewood, has been charged with two counts of mail fraud and attempted mail fraud.
He is accused of defrauding the Social Security Administration by signing and sending letters on behalf of another doctor, Dennis Erik Fluck Von Kiel, of Lehigh County.
The two letters, sent in the fall of 2013 to a law firm that helps clients obtain Social Security disability benefits, falsely contended that Burton had been treating Von Kiel for about seven years, and that Von Kiel suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and was unable to work, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia.
Burton was not a psychiatrist, had no specialized mental health training, and did not diagnose Von Kiel with PTSD, prosecutors said.
Burton was arrested at his Conshohocken home by FBI agents Friday morning.
At his initial appearance in court Friday afternoon, Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Caracappa said Burton would be released on $10,000 recognizance bail, as recommended by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Dubnoff.
Arraignment before a U.S. District Court judge has not yet been scheduled.
Burton's attorney, Stephen LaCheen, and a woman who said she was Burton's wife both declined to comment after the hearing.
If convicted, Burton faces a maximum possible sentence of 40 years in prison.
According to his indictment, Burton and Von Kiel, now 59, a doctor of osteopathy, had been friends for many years.
Von Kiel, who treated inmates at the Lehigh County Prison in Allentown from 1989 to August 2013, pleaded guilty last January to charges related to Burton's case and to numerous other offenses, and was sentenced in April to 41 months behind bars.
On Aug. 22, 2013, a company called PrimeCare Medical Inc., which had hired Von Kiel to be its medical director at the Lehigh County Prison and other correctional facilities, had terminated his employment for reasons unrelated to any disability, authorities said.
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