A full decade ago, the federal government indicted Dr. Paul C. Madison for insurance fraud, claiming that between 2005 and 2009 he had fraudulently billed insurance companies for about $3.5 million in claims, ordered employees at his Water Tower Place clinic to falsify bills in order to charge for procedures not performed and falsified patient records.
It would take until 2018 for a jury to convict Madison on all counts and for the physician to face up to 10 years in prison. Madison helped run the Riverside Pain Clinic at 28 E. Burlington St. between 2013 and 2017. He was never charged with a crime related to the Riverside location although his name was connected to other lawsuits and indictments accused of improperly prescribing millions of doses of powerful opioids.
He remained a free man, however, as sentencing date after sentencing date – eight in all – were postponed. Last December, a federal judge set sentencing for Feb. 2, 2022.
That date ended up being stricken as well, and it turns out Madison will never serve time for his crimes.
Madison, the Landmark has learned, died Jan. 22, 2022. A spokesperson for Madison’s attorney confirmed the physician’s death.
A day before Madison’s death, his attorney, Jeffrey Steinback, entered a motion to file a document under seal. Steinback explained that Madison had been “unavailable” for three weeks as the two prepared for the Feb. 2 sentencing.
That lack of availability, Steinback wrote, would be explained in a letter he requested be sealed as it revealed “recent circumstances personal and private to Mr. Madison, such information being protected (under) the Privacy Act and HIPPA.”
The judge noted in the court record on Jan. 28 that he was striking the Feb. 2 sentencing date. The last entry in the court record for case was made March 1, when the judge gave permission for Steinback to file another record under seal. The case remains open, and there’s no public docket entry mentioning Madison’s death.
In April 2021, Madison had been granted one of his eight sentencing delays after informing the court he was being treated for prostate cancer.
While Madison was never charged with any wrongdoing connected to his practices at the Riverside Pain Clinic, he was connected to other criminal and civil lawsuits.
He was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2016 criminal suit against executives at Insys Therapeutics, which manufactured a powerful fentanyl spray to be administered to end-stage cancer patients.
Insys had hired Madison to serve as a paid “spokesman” and to prescribe their product. In 2020, five Insys Therapeutics executives were convicted of racketeering.
According to court documents, in the two years prior to his Illinois medical license being revoked, Madison prescribed about 1.6 million doses of controlled substances out of the Riverside clinic.
Illinois suspended Madison’s medical license in 2016 along with another doctor at the downtown Riverside clinic, William McMahon.
Unable to find doctors to prescribe pain medications, the Riverside clinic’s “administrator,” Dr. Joseph Giacchino, closed its doors in early 2017. Giacchino’s medical license had been revoked in 2011 after being accused of improperly prescribing controlled substances and offering free medications to female patients in exchange for sex.
In 2018, Madison, Giacchino and McMahon were the only physicians named in a sprawling class-action civil lawsuit filed by municipalities and other government agencies nationwide against around a dozen opioid manufacturers and distributors.
Riverside, North Riverside and Brookfield are all party to the class-action suit and stand to claim some of the funds obtained by the state of Illinois through settlements with distributors McKesson, Cardinal Health and Amerisource Bergen, the manufacturer Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. and its parent company Johnson & Johnson.
Illinois is expected to receive about $760 million of the total $22.7 billion settlement. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced in February that municipalities would start receiving funds in the second quarter of 2022.
To date, that money has not been disbursed.
