Rats! Shrink Ken Weitnzer Was a Federal Informant

Written by:
Thomas Somach
Published on:
May/04/2010

Deceased gambling portal owner Kenneth B. "The Shrink" Weitzner once ratted out three medical co-workers and turned them in to Federal authorities, in order to keep himself out of prison, Gambling911.com can reveal in a world exclusive report!

The shocking information about Weitzner, who killed himself last month at his Chesapeake, Virginia mansion, came out in 1998 during a high-stakes civil court battle in Virginia between Weitzner, then owner of the portal The Prescription (www.therx.com), and Dennis Atiyeh of Whitehall, Pennsylvania, then owner of Jamaican offshore sportsbook English Sports Betting (ESB) and weekly gambling magazine the Las Vegas Sporting News (LVSN).

In the fall of 1998, Weitzner wrote on The Prescription that ESB was going out of business because an LVSN employee, Lynda Collins, had received a paycheck that bounced when she tried to cash it in a Las Vegas casino,

Weitzner falsely made the assumption that because one LVSN employee got one bounced check on one occasion, that LVSN must be in financial trouble, and since the owner of LVSN also owned ESB, then ESB must be in financial trouble too.

Weitzner advised readers of The Prescription who wagered with ESB to immdiately pull out all their betting funds--and some did.

"I'd rather be at the front of the line than at the back of line when ESB starts giving out refunds," Weitzner famously wrote, in a sentence that particularly irked Atiyeh.

Atiyeh, a high-strung, burly former All-America football player at the University of Pittsburgh, sued Weitzner and The Prescription for libel for $5 million.

Weitzner quickly countersued Atiyeh and ESB (but not LVSN) for libel for $10 million, for comments made about Weitzner in the 1998 LVSN Football Annual (in an article on touts, Weitzner was described as "sleazy" and "a wacko").

The competing libel lawsuits went on for a few weeks until they basically cancelled each other out and a settlement was reached--neither party would have to pay the other side anything, and both sides agreed never to write anything again about the other side (Atiyeh thought he won the battle because he got the judge to remove Weitzner's website from the Internet for several weeks).

But, in the weeks of trial before that agreement was reached, a team of top private investigators hired by Atiyeh's attorneys uncovered numerous instances of previous criminal behavior by Weitzner.

The attorneys planned to use that information to discredit Weitzner in court.

The most shocking instance--that Weitzner once ratted out co-workers to the Feds to keep himself out of prison after being arrested for fraud--was not revealed in court because the dual libel cases were abruptly settled before Atiyeh's lawyers had a chance to bring it up.

So what did happen?

According to records from Atiyeh's attorneys' private investigators, which included a former FBI agent, Weitzner was arrested in the mid-1980s in New York for falsifying medical documents to falsely show he was a psychiatrist and allow him to practice medicine and prescribe medication.

Earlier, Weitzner had graduated from a three-year Virginia medical school (in five years) with a degree in psychiatry, but then couldn't pass the medical boards exam which would officially certify him as a doctor and legally allow him to practice medicine.

So he moved back to his hometown New York area, where his certification failure was unknown, and joined a psychiatric practice in an office with three other shrinks.

Weitzner faked the paperwork needed to prove he was a licensed psychiatrist, and began illegally practicing psychiatry and prescribing meds.

One of the people who he wrote illegal prescriptions for painkillers for was his then girlfriend Jackie, who he would later marry.

The scam didn't last--before long Federal law enforcement authorities got wind of what was happening and busted Weitzner and charged him with multiple felonies.

Weitzner was facing a looooong stretch in Federal prison.

Since Jackie was the main prosecution witness against Weitzner, who knew a wife couldn't be forced to testify in court against her husband, he quickly married Jackie and figured he was in the clear because the Feds would no longer have their main witness for a prosecution.

The ploy didn't work, as the Feds had other witnesses and other evidence and told The Shrink his multi-felony prosecution would go on.

Frantic, the ersatz doc begged the Feds for a way out.

Told by the Feds that he could avoid prison if he turned in any doctors he knew who were engaged in more serious criminal activity, Weitzner ratted out the three fellow shrinks in his office, who were involved in massive Medicare fraud, defrauding the U.S. government out of more than $30,000 in false insurance claims.

Those three doctors were each charged with multiple felonies and eventually went to prison.

In exchange for his cooperation, the felonies against Weitzner were reduced to a single misdemeanor charge--he paid a small fine but got no jail time.

And he never became a doctor--shortly after avoiding prison, he moved back to Virginia, got into sports betting and sports handicapping and eventually started The Prescription, which he later sold before starting a second portal, Eye on Gambling (www.eog.com).

So how does this all connect to Weitzner's suicide last month?

Weitzner was apparently in some kind of trouble again--the Feds raided his home and seized his computers after he killed himself.

Was Weitzner being pressured by the Feds to rat out some colleagues to save his skin again, this time colleagues in the gambling industry?

And was Weitzner balking, because doctors you rat out don't carry guns, unlike offshore bookies you might rat out?

Did Weitzner's controversial life finally come down to a Hobson's choice, which is no choice at all?

Was he facing the choice of going to prison for the rest of his life or ratting out Mob-connected online bookies who would surely seek deadly revenge?

Was it die in prison or die by Mob assassin?

Maybe that's why Weitzner died by his own hand.

By Tom Somach

Gambling911.com Staff Writer

tomsomach@yahoo.com

 

Gambling News

Syndicate