Plummer Clinic Owner Arrested For Fraud

A Farmington, Wash., man arrested this week on California charges alleging medical fraud had been running a health-care clinic in North Idaho.

Hugh Clarence Johnson, who also used the name Clarence Hugh Jonson, was arrested Wednesday by the Whitman County Sheriff’s Office in Washington on a Sonoma County, Calif., warrant detailing 47 felony and two misdemeanor charges.

Johnson, 50, was being held Thursday in the Whitman County Jail in lieu of $150,000 bond.

He opened the North Idaho Health Care Clinic in Plummer - just across the state line from northern Whitman County - about eight months ago.

Johnson specialized in naturopathic medicine, said Conny Ellestad. Her husband, Gerhard Ellestad, opened his business at the clinic in July. He is a chiropractor.

Conny Ellestad said she and her husband were shocked to find out about the the charges against Johnson. “If we’d know that we’d never have joined him,” she said. “It’s a shame because he is so talented.”

The couple will close down the Plummer clinic by the middle of next week and will reopen their business in their home.

Johnson has relatives in the Farmington area and was “attempting to hide” from police when he was arrested, Whitman County Sheriff’s Sgt. Don Anderson said.

He is wanted in California on charges of forging prescriptions in other doctors’ names, using other doctors’ pharmacy numbers and practicing medicine without a license, Anderson said.

Charges against him include eight counts of worker’s compensation fraud, 11 counts of practicing medicine without a license, eight counts of prescribing controlled substances, 18 counts of forgery, one count of forgery of a physical therapy license, one count of being a felon in possession of a weapon, one count of unlicensed practice of physical therapy and one count of use of an unapproved medical device.

A Medical Board of California spokeswoman said Johnson has past criminal convictions including a 1984 conviction for giving false and misleading statements to the public and an 1986 conviction for giving false statements to a federal agency.

Johnson refused a request for an interview from jail Thursday.

, DataTimes