Original subtitles

This is a CNBC original.

In this episode of American Greed. Dr. Stokes, your reaction tonight?

Dr. Robert Stokes.

People call them greedy.

People call them arrogant.

A dermatologist obsessed with the bottom line.

I think he just was like trying to get every last penny.

He steals patients' money and reuses medical supplies.

Patients are put in danger.

I feel like he physically attacked me.

And now you're telling me that there's a possibility that I've been exposed to

hepatitis? For patients of Dr. Robert Stokes, what some have called the dirty

doctor. All so Dr.

Stokes can make more money.

You're nothing but a paycheck.

And later, Darlene Wooten and Charlene Corley, twin sisters,

amassing a fortune in defense contracts.

There was no reason to doubt.

that they had succeeded in living the American dream.

But behind the scenes, things are not as they seem.

They were stealing this money from our Department of Defense and from our

government.

The money is taxpayer money. It's our money.

It's a story that will ultimately end in disgrace and death.

We're all going to have to answer to what we've done, and I'm sure they've

lot to answer to.

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, along a busy street, there's an ordinary

office building housing a dermatologist, Dr. Robert Stokes.

Few people have any reason to suspect that behind these walls, the good doctor

is perpetrating a massive fraud and that he's doing it literally on the backs of

his patients.

In hindsight, you have all kinds of...

Things that, oh, that was a red flag. Why didn't I notice that?

In June 2006, Melissa Wedberg starts going to Dr. Robert Stokes for adult

One night, while getting ready for bed, she sees something new on her skin.

And I noticed a small mole on my chest. And I'd never seen it before. It was

small like a freckle. And I thought, oh, well, since I'm going to the

dermatologist tomorrow, I'll ask about that.

The next morning, Dr. Stokes takes a look at the mold.

And he said, that's got to come off. That's got to come off right away.

The tone of his voice was alarming.

Dr. Stokes cuts off the mold and sends it out for biopsy.

One week later, the results are in.

Melissa has skin cancer.

Oh, I was 26 years old. I was completely shocked.

I mean, I was freaked out. I thought, this is crazy. What do you mean, cancer?

Skin cancer? I mean...

I'm too young.

Dr. Stokes tells Melissa she needs to come back for more extensive surgery to

make sure the cancer is gone.

One week later, she's back in his office.

He came in, and he was really abrupt.

He just came in, he started cutting, but it was just like, okay, I'm here, let's

get this procedure done.

Melissa describes the procedure as violent.

At times during the surgery, she's brought to tears.

Fortunately, she has a friend at her side to soothe her.

My girlfriend was at the end of the table, and she was kind of rubbing my

just trying to keep me calm.

And it was summer in Michigan, so I had flip -flops on, and I had this little

freckle on my third toe.

And Nicole says, uh -oh, we better have this taken off, too. She's joking,

trying to lighten the mood. And then the doctor says...

Oh, that's got to come off. Schedule her to have that off and schedule a

subcutaneous exam. We need to examine your whole body.

So I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. I mean, that's a freckle.

After about 20 minutes, the surgery is complete, and Dr. Stokes begins to sew

the wound.

I mean, I felt like I was being yanked on the table.

That was the moment when I just knew something was off.

So he quick stitched me up, and he left the room.

And we paid the copay, and we left, and we walked out of the office.

I just, I didn't feel right. I felt uneasy. I just had a bad taste in my

In pain, bleeding, and in need of company, Melissa asks her friend to join

for lunch.

At a restaurant, her friend picks up a newspaper.

She gets this, like, look of panic, and she walks over to me with the newspaper

in her hand.

And I look at the newspaper, and the front page of the Grand Rapids Press

that day says, Dermatologist Indicted on Healthcare Fraud.

And it was him.

And I thought, you're kidding. I mean, I'm standing here with an open wound on

my chest.

This doctor's on the front page of the Grand Rapids Press for healthcare fraud?

You were indicted in federal court.

And today, at 9 a .m., you're operating on me with a scalpel.

The situation demands a second opinion.

And just as Melissa fears, her new dermatologist says she never had cancer.

And the surgery performed by Dr. Stokes was unnecessary.

Melissa Wedberg is one of the last among hundreds of victims of Dr. Robert

Stokes.

It's a story of botched surgeries, billing fraud, and, his patients say,

treating them like little more than a paycheck.

It was like I never existed. I was just simply something that was there like a

slab of meat to have a chunk taken off.

I went in there, in and out the door like a piece of lumber.

Greg Anderson is in charge of fraud investigations for Blue Cross and Blue

Shield of Michigan.

In 2001, the company's fraud hotline begins receiving tips from patients of

Stokes.

Patients have examined their benefit statements.

They believe Dr.

Stokes has charged Blue Cross Blue Shield for services the doctor did not

perform.

Dr. Stokes certainly isn't the largest dollar volume fraud case we've had,

but in my experience, it's probably the most egregious disregard.

for the safety of patients.

As Anderson will later learn, Dr. Stokes is performing unnecessary surgeries.

Bob May starts seeing Dr. Stokes for skin cancer in 2001.

It started off monthly, and then biweekly, and then it was weekly.

May is surprised by how often he's diagnosed with skin cancer, but he has

in the doctor. His life, it seems, is in Stokes' hands.

You just put your trust in them and you don't know what you've got because

you're not, at least in my case, I guess I wasn't smart enough to go get another

opinion.

Each visit, Dr.

Stokes cuts out lesions that he says are cancerous.

My wife and I tried to figure out, we are sure that I've probably had a couple

thousand done.

Every one of those spots is something that's been done and then redone to the

point that my skin now is to the point there's just no elastic to it anymore

that I have to constantly use some kind of a Medicaid cream to keep the skin

because he cut so much of it away.

Stokes' patients believe he's performing unnecessary procedures, billing for

surgeries he didn't perform.

and also double -dipping, billing insurance companies twice for one

It affords him a luxurious life.

He lives in a five -bedroom, eight -bath mansion on the shores of Reed's Lake,

one of Grand Rapids' most exclusive neighborhoods.

The house has an indoor pool, a solarium with glass imported from England, and a

photography studio.

It was once on the market for $7 .7 million, the highest asking price in the

history of the county.

I think this is one of the biggest examples of pure greed to put money in

pocket. When American greed returns, this isn't just a case of stealing from

insurance companies.

Greed causes Stokes to cut corners and reuse syringes and sutures, putting

in jeopardy.

And now you're telling me that there's a possibility that I've been exposed to

hepatitis?

In my mind, he's sick.

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, Dr. Robert Stokes enjoys the good life in his Tudor

-style mansion.

It sits atop a hill overlooking a lake.

Inside, there's a pool, a billiard room, and a kitchen with a custom -made

pastry oven from Germany.

This lifestyle is bankrolled by an extremely lucrative dermatology

But Dr.

Stokes' business is steeped in fraud.

He builds insurance companies for operations that he never performed.

And he puts his patients through the pain of unnecessary procedures.

For patients of Dr. Robert Stokes, what some have called the dirty doctor. Dr.

Stokes faces a mountain of charges.

Additional complaints filed with the state against Stokes. All because he

medical equipment that was supposed to be disposed of. Brian Sterling covers

story for NBC affiliate Wood TV 8.

He obviously had a scheme going in which he was using fear as a manipulative

tool to get these people to spend more money with him, to spend more time. Yet

another procedure, another test, over and over and over again, all the time,

patient's wondering, what's wrong with me?

To top it all off, many patients described Stokes' bedside manner as

He was acting very agitated. He started swearing, and I asked him, you know,

what the problem was.

In March 2006, Deborah Janney asked Dr. Stokes to remove a benign cyst from her

wrist. The operation is supposed to take an hour, tops.

But midway into the procedure, Dr.

Stokes gets surly.

Oh, at one point he's like, God, and then he said hell one time. He's barking

at his nurses.

The supposedly one -hour operation takes three hours.

I kept asking, well, what's the problem? Why are you having so much difficulty?

Why are you swearing?

Why are you so angry?

Later that night, Jannie says her wound is painful and looks infected.

The bruising had just kept going up higher and higher.

It's bad enough that her husband snaps these pictures.

The way it was stitched up, it looked like a little kid had been knitting with

it or sewing with it.

The infection gets worse, Jannie says.

And Dr. Stokes prescribes an antibiotic regimen.

But here the doctor pulls a dirty trick.

He bills both Deborah and her insurance carrier as though the infection were

caused by something external to the surgery. When in fact, Jannie believes

infection was caused by the surgery itself.

She is outraged that Stokes is charging her for a condition that he caused.

Very, very angry.

Very angry.

Deborah confronts the doctor at his office.

Both of our voices were very loud.

And he just kept saying that you're going to have to pay the money. It's an

infection now. I kept saying, but the infection was due to your surgery.

And he would not come to terms with us. I could not believe he was

getting by with us.

Horror stories abound.

Richard Ganoudis says Stokes has him come to the office multiple times for

procedures that his new doctor would have taken care of in one visit.

This spot right here is the one that he said would never heal.

There's a scar here from one of them.

For example, if four lesions are believed to be cancerous, most

take out all four in one visit.

You see the length of that one and that one there.

That's considered best practice, even though the doctor earns marginally less.

You would be paid a full removal of the first lesion, and then you would be paid

a lower amount for removing the second, third, and fourth lesion at that time.

Dr. Stokes, on the other hand, strings the patient out over four separate

visits, maximizing his profits.

By bringing the people back, each time he was able to bill for the full amount

of the surgery.

totally disregarding the safety of the patient, the inconvenience to the

patient, the risk of infection and everything else to that patient, just

sake of putting money in his pocket.

By 2001, Greg Anderson with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan joins forces

the FBI and the U .S. Attorney's Office.

They interview dozens of patients and ultimately get a search warrant to seize

records at Dr. Stokes' office.

We were able to...

pretty easily established that at least 40 % of his practice was fraudulent in

nature. And it certainly could have been greater.

The investigation shows that Dr. Stokes stole at least $1 .9 million from

insurance companies, Medicare, and patients.

On August 28, 2006, Stokes is arraigned in federal court on 72 felony counts of

health care fraud.

The next morning...

He operates on Melissa Wedberg.

I just thought, wait a minute, why isn't he in jail pending his trial? Why isn't

he, his medical license on hold pending his trial? I couldn't understand why no

one had stabbed him earlier.

And I asked that question to the prosecutor probably a hundred times.

But then the FBI makes a discovery that will shut Stokes down for good.

Investigators obtain a videotape Dr. Stokes made of some of his operations,

hoping to exonerate himself.

It does just the opposite.

On the tape, it appears Stokes is reusing sutures.

Sutures are packaged with about 18 inches of thread attached to the needle.

Dr. Stokes, it appears, sews up one patient. He then cuts off the unused

of the thread, the part that has already passed through skin.

and reused it on another patient.

It just made me sick.

Just to think, oh, my goodness. Then I flashback and think the times I did have

to have a few sutures because he had done one over my eye and done it in my

I said, my goodness, what have I gotten?

Sutures are like the most inexpensive medical equipment you can come by. I

mean... So this made me think, if you're reusing sutures, what else are you

reusing? At the local health department, Director Kathy Rayefsky believes the

reuse of sutures and syringes puts patients at risk of life -threatening

illnesses, including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV.

The risk of transmission we felt was very low, but it wasn't zero.

And frankly, if you're the one person who is not the zero, it's pretty serious

for you. So it was important that we notify people.

Letters go out to 13 ,000 patients, warning them to get tested for hepatitis

HIV. The local media is put on alert.

As the health department opens their emergency call -in center for concerned

patients... Some people are, to be honest, hysterical.

There were people that were very scared about the unknown.

They didn't know what they had, if they had anything at all.

You really stop and take a minute to think about it, and it's like, this

really happen. I could get aids from this, from what this guy did.

It had to be just so traumatic to folks.

to realize that they could have a life -threatening disease put into them by

someone that was just purely out for money.

Unbelievable.

When American greed returns, thousands of patients undergo frightening tests.

But Dr.

Stokes wants to clear his name and get back in business.

Will he be stopped?

People like that are monsters. They need to be locked up.

In April 2007, Dr. Robert Stokes, a dermatologist, goes on trial in Grand

Rapids, Michigan.

Stokes is accused of 37 criminal counts of health care fraud, and his patients

believe he's put them through unnecessary operations.

He was trying to glean as much money as he could from the insurance companies,

from the patients, from saving money on spending on his medical supplies.

Right on down the line.

The crimes that outrage the community the most are the breaches of public

The government believes Stokes reused medical equipment, including sutures and

syringes. For a guy that was making so much money and seemed to be so

successful, why was he acting in a manner that suggested that he was so

But the criminal trial of Robert Stokes will focus only on health care fraud.

which disappoints some of Stokes' victims.

And I'm sitting in that trial knowing that they're going after the fraud.

And I'm thinking, but what about all the other stuff, you know? And

unfortunately, there wasn't laws against the other stuff. There's no laws saying

you can't use dirty sutures or you can't reuse disposable sutures.

I don't know if that's like the caution hot on the McDonald's.

that it's kind of obvious, so there's no law for it. But, like, there should be

a law, because obviously not everybody follows, you know, standard procedure.

Thousands of former patients undergo blood tests for hepatitis B, C, and HIV.

Six patients test positive for hepatitis C.

I believe that these six individuals did not know.

It's impossible, however, to tell whether Dr.

Stokes infected them or they got the disease from another source.

All of the Stokes patients who speak with American Greed get a clean bill of

health. The results, thank God, were negative.

On April 26, 2007, the jury in the criminal trial of Robert Stokes reaches

verdict.

Guilty on 31 counts of health care fraud.

Until he's sentenced, Stokes is free to return to his mansion on the hill.

But the house is empty, and his marriage is ending.

Here, in his lonely mansion, Stokes gets to work on what may be his last car,

trying to collect every last penny from former patients.

Then I got a letter, actually from him.

Please be advised you have a balance due to Robert W. Stokes, DO, PC, of $135.

At the bottom of the letter, it refers to a collection, you know, Stokes

Collection Department.

And the address was his home.

In 2002, Dr. Stokes performs a procedure on Larry Broomberg that another doctor

later says should never have been done.

Now, five years later, Stokes is still trying to collect.

Respectfully, Robert Stokes, final collections department.

That really amused me. He's not only got a collections department, he has a

final collections department.

So I wrote here, you've got to be kidding.

You owe me $215 for tests I had to undertake because of your procedures.

If my credit should suffer any negative result from your mindless attempt to

collect fees for botched services, I shall sue both your agency and D .O.

in or out of prison.

Many other patients received similar collection letters from the Stokes

Collection Agency, including Melissa Wedberg.

Stokes left Melissa with a three -inch scar from an operation that her new

doctor believes should never have been performed.

And now he's trying to ding her for $1 ,392.

I mean, what else do you want from me?

You did every kind of harm I can imagine. You harmed me physically,

mentally, and financially.

Now you want to send me to collection.

I mean, really?

Needless to say, Larry and Melissa refused to pay the bills.

On December 27, 2007, Robert Stokes goes up for sentencing.

Victims have a chance to speak their minds to Dr.

Stokes directly.

He took our respect away. He took our ability to feel good about ourselves.

I think for a long time, it scarred me to the point of, oh, I don't look as

as I used to look.

And this man made money and made me look this way.

When Melissa testifies at the sentencing hearing, Stokes' defense attorney shows

the jury a letter Melissa's father has written to Stokes.

In the last line, it reads, my hope for you is that you rot in hell.

Melissa believes the defense attorney is trying to suggest she has a personal

vendetta against Stokes.

He said, how do you feel about that?

And I said, I hope he rots in hell.

And I think they thought that I would say, well, you know, I don't hate him. I

don't. But I did.

And I do.

Robert Stokes is sentenced to ten and a half years in federal prison.

The sentence is actually below the federal guidelines of 12 to 15 years.

The prosecutors were looking for even more time in prison for just breaching

public trust the way he did. The judge didn't see it that way and sentenced

Stokes to just ten and a half years. So I think there was a little frustration

on behalf of some of the patients who felt that he deserved a lot more.

I would have liked to have been much more, but being at his age, I thought we

stopped him.

They took away what he had.

So he's going to pay the price now.

In March 2010, in response to the Stokes case, Michigan Governor Jennifer

Granholm signs a law prohibiting the reuse of single -use medical devices.

Next, two sisters steal $20 million of your money.

Lexington, South Carolina.

It's a place where traditions and philosophies have lasted for

Lexington County is a small county, population -wise, but we're in a

county.

Churches and schools are the center of the community.

It's a law -abiding county.

It is into this tradition that in 1960, twin sisters Darlene and Charlene Shuler

are born, where they would marry and raise families, and where they would

a business, like many who came before them. But it's a tradition they will

ultimately betray.

Their early years are unremarkable.

Like many of their peers, they graduate from local airport high school and move

on to nearby Clemson University,

Before joining the workforce.

You know, Charlene and Darlene did not have a history of being a savvy business

people.

Charlene worked at the South Carolina Budget and Control Board.

She had a very limited work experience.

Darlene was a school teacher.

But they have bigger things in mind.

In 1991, they decide to join forces.

Charlene and Darlene form a business called C &D Distributors.

The company sells small hardware components, bolts, washers, plumbing

In the beginning, it's a modest operation at best.

It was not a significant business at all.

And then it seemed that they learned of how a mom -and -pop or a sister -and

-sister business could become defense contractors.

That's exactly what they do.

In 1993, they began distributing hardware items to the military.

But even with the government contracts, the business essentially treads water

for years.

In the black, I guess somebody would say, profitable but not, you know, used

Honda profitable, not new Mercedes profitable.

These were very low -dollar items.

They were hardware items, you know, nuts, bolts, screws, light bulbs.

Typically not the things dreams are made of. Until July 2000, when a small

accounting error changes everything.

It looked like they had made a mistake on one of their invoices at some point.

And that the invoice number had been plugged into the block for shipping

And that had been paid.

A simple mistake by the twins and $5 ,000 lands right on their doorstep.

The sisters pay the money back, but the temptation for these church -going women

is too much to resist.

You never know what goes through somebody's mind, but for some reason,

made the decision to try to do it on purpose.

It works.

Without knowing how or why, the sisters have discovered a loophole in the

Department of Defense's automated payment system.

It seems they can charge almost any price for shipping.

and the Department of Defense will pay it.

All of the bids were submitted electronically, and that was one of the

it was allowed to occur, because there weren't a set of human eyes that were

reviewing these bids. In a nutshell, government contractors submit a

billing invoice really for the product itself and for the shipping. The pot of

money to pay for a specific good.

It is segregated or separate from shipping costs. Shipping just comes out

another pot.

And those costs are never reconciled before being paid.

It is the beginning of a $20 million fraud perpetrated on the United States

government.

There's a sense that they were emboldened the longer they were able to

and the longer that it worked. So it's like, oh,

$100 ,000 went through. Why not $200 ,000?

We get to the point where September of 06, we're talking million dollar

invoices.

I just I don't know where their consciences would have kicked in and

would have said enough.

But clearly it wasn't before they got caught.

Next on American Greed, Charlene and Darlene put 20 million of your tax

to work.

In Lexington, South Carolina, twin sisters Charlene Corley and Darlene

have found a glitch in the Department of Defense payment system.

Through a minor bookkeeping error, they have discovered that their humble

hardware distributorship can charge virtually any price for shipping, and

Department of Defense will pay it.

What they were doing is submitting bids, and they were inflating the shipping

costs for those items.

It was a pretty simple scheme.

A simple scheme that eventually puts more than $20 million in the twins'

pockets.

It comes as the result of an automated payment system the Department of Defense

has set up to get supplies to the front lines as quickly as possible.

Because we were at war, if these guys have a piece of equipment that's not

working, we want to get them that equipment as fast as we can.

We want to give suppliers an incentive to get it there as fast as we can.

Anything considered high priority, including bolts and screws, is paid

automatically. Human eyes never verify shipping charges before they are paid.

So the objective was to get these people paid, to make them want to do business

with the government, and also to keep the troops safe and well supplied.

Anyone would agree that's an admirable goal.

Not everyone accepts the excuse.

I don't buy it.

We have a system that declares a single nut, a single lock washer, to be some

kind of an emergency.

We have to ship it to the United States to get it there. What a screwy system.

Winslow Wheeler is a part of the Center for Defense Information, a group that

keeps tabs on the way the Department of Defense conducts business.

This kind of thing has been going on for decades.

It's basically a system under the pretense of being streamlined

made itself unaccountable. These two sisters were the outsiders exploiting a

system that invited people to exploit it.

And exploit it they did.

Once they determined that this inflated shipping cost would be paid.

They went with it, and some would say drove a Mack truck through it.

The first overcharges are for tens of thousands of dollars, but soon they grow

to hundreds of thousands.

So the price of the good is $3 .99.

Totally. And then the shipping that was charged for it was what?

$401 ,999 to ship.

They submitted almost $72 million.

in fraudulent shipping costs, and a little over $20 million were paid.

They are living very well with the money that they're getting out of this.

The sisters are driving matching Mercedes Coupes.

They're taking very lavish vacations, taking their friends on these vacations.

There's a nice beach south of here, Edisto Beach, where over time they

four different beach houses.

They have these boats and jet skis, and they're living large.

They were stealing money to go to New York and buy hundreds of thousands of

dollars of custom jewelry.

They were stealing money to go on Caribbean cruises and going to Las

they bought gifts for people. They bought cars for people.

One of the expenditures.

Identified was a $250 ,000 box seat purchased at Clemson Stadium.

They certainly gave the impression of doing very well economically.

Ted Stamboulidis owns a restaurant and a small shopping center in town.

With all the money rolling in, the twins decide they want a taste of something

more in line with their guilty pleasures.

They approach Stamboulidis about renting out a space.

Charlene and Darlene had wanted to open up a national recognized

cookie store.

They invested in a Nestle Toll House cookie franchise. They call it Dillon

Cookie LLC, which we always thought was for Darlene and Charlene.

The exuberance they demonstrate in their new venture is clear, perhaps too

clear, as they soon incur another cost at the taxpayer's expense, gastric

surgery for them and their husbands.

But before long, it appears that the cookie store is little more than a

I don't think it was doing that great, not nearly as lucrative as the

of Defense business.

Then in the early fall of 2006, the twins suddenly shut the store down.

They just shut it down without any notice of any kind, just a phone call,

closing the store.

Thank you, bye. And that was it.

The sweet life for the twins is about to run out in more ways than one.

In Columbus, Ohio, the Department of Defense's Payment Center has discovered

discrepancy in one of C &D's contracts.

After more than six years of fleecing the U .S. government of $20 .5 million,

the twins have finally gone too far.

They submit two shipping invoices for the same contract.

And even the government's generous payment system won't abide it.

That actually kicked it out of the computer system and caused it to land on

somebody's desk.

It's the most outrageous charge attempted yet. And the Department of

looking right at it.

It's a contract for two lock washers, billed at 19 cents each.

The shipping charge?

$998 ,000.

They have the audacity.

to send those to the Department of Defense, where the money is coming out

pockets.

They have the audacity to bill almost a million dollars to send those two

washers. And you can imagine, with an error of that magnitude, that it got

everybody's attention.

In September 2006, the Department of Defense fires a warning shot. They send

certified letters to C &D distributors, wanting answers for the more than $20

million in excess shipping costs.

They realized that the game was up, and I'm quite sure that there were some

words of prayer and some nervous people that night.

To try to make amends, Darlene sends the government a check for $4 .5 million.

It's a reasonable deduction from her actions that she was trying to say,

we can make it better, we'll pay you back, and we'll be good from now on.

But it's only wishful thinking.

There are no bank robbers on the way out of the bank with the money. They get to

turn around and hand it back, and everything's fine.

When American Greed returns, the circle closes in around the twins.

Will they face the music?

You never know why somebody takes that step.

But certainly the writing was on the wall, and I think she was fully aware of

that on October 2nd when the agents left.

In Lexington, South Carolina, the Department of Defense has uncovered a

million fraud being perpetrated on the United States government.

Twin sisters Charlene Corley and Darlene Wooten have been selling the Department

of Defense common, low -cost hardware, then collecting millions in shipping

fees. I mean, we really are talking odds and ends.

Lock washers, bolts, light bulbs.

To put it in context, the amount of the fraud was about $20 .5 million.

The total cost of the goods for that $20 .5 million was about $150 ,000.

The twins have paid a fraction of the money back, $4 .5 million, but it's not

nearly enough.

On October 2, 2006, federal investigators show up at C &D's front

Darlene requested that they come back the following day, said she needed to

gather some papers, gather her thoughts, and that implied, at least, that it

would be a more productive discussion the next day.

But Darlene has no intention of meeting again with investigators.

She approached one of the employees, said she wanted to borrow his pistol,

handgun. Said she wants to go out and shoot it or at least look at it, that

she's thinking about buying it or something like that.

The young person has no reason to believe that what's about to take place

coming. And so he gives her his gun.

We know now that she drove out to the lake.

Agents then called her sister Charlene, pushing a bit harder for a meeting. But

Charlene doesn't know where her sister is.

And at that point, I think Charlene and other family members started to try to

reach her and couldn't.

Ultimately, Charlene went out to a trailer that was out of the lake.

When she arrived, she was the one who discovered.

her sister and that her sister killed herself.

Despite the tragedy, the feds move to gather as much evidence as they can.

Charlene hires an attorney and quickly takes up a defense.

They argue that it was Darlene who headed the entire operation and that

simply turned a blind eye.

I think one of the really unfortunate things in the whole case was that when

Darlene took her life, it enabled this defense.

And it was a tad offensive to me in that, you know,

here's your sister's memory, and this is what the impression that you want to

leave people with regarding her role in this.

Still, it's a plausible defense, and the central eyewitness to Charlene's

involvement is now gone.

And so as the investigation continued, our interest was discovering how

Charlene was on the C &D distributor side.

To prosecutors, the evidence points to only one possible conclusion, that

Charlene was well aware of the fraud.

From Charlene, signed by Charlene.

Her name is actually on the Department of Defense's record for the 38 -Cent

Washers. It's not Darlene's name that's on there.

Her name is on all of these pieces of paper that are associated with hundreds

thousands of dollars and millions of dollars of shipping costs.

We came to the inescapable conclusion that she had knowledge of what was going

on and that she needed to be prosecuted.

Eventually, prosecutors sit down with Charlene and her attorney and show her

the evidence.

Charlene's response was that she pled guilty.

On August 16, 2007, Corley pleads guilty to two counts of conspiracy, one

for wire fraud and one for money laundering.

It sets off a storm of reactions across Lexington County.

She was threatened. Her family was threatened.

There were people who were angry that she had stolen this money from our

country.

At sentencing, prosecutors point out the betrayal within the crime.

This was money that was being diverted away from our troops and the Department

of Defense.

So not only is it the taxpayer, but it's the American soldiers who were

victimized by this.

And that's the way we viewed it. We thought it was an anti -American crime.

Corley gets a chance to address the court.

When Charlene was given the opportunity to speak for herself, she was extremely

brief. She said that she had messed up and that she was sorry.

And it was a bit striking to me. I've heard people who have stolen, you know,

far less money, far less money, $5 ,000, you know, express more remorse.

The judge is not impressed and sentences Corley to six and a half years in

prison.

In the wake of the case, the Department of Defense says that they fixed the

loophole that facilitated this crime.

But government watchdog Winslow Wheeler is still skeptical.

Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. We don't really know.

We don't have an evaluation or an audit of their fix.

In the end, the residents of Lexington County are left to make sense of a

betrayal to their values.

What happened right here with C &D and Corley's is something that takes away

from our country.

and takes away from supporting our soldiers.

And that is the worst thing to do in our country, especially when we're at war.

In the final analysis, when it's all said and done, we're all going to be

our maker, and we're all going to have to answer to what we've done, and I'm

sure they've got a lot to answer to.