Phony Doc Sentenced to Real Jail Time

by Carol Lewis
FDA Consumer
Investigators' Reports
January-February 1999

A man who posed as a doctor and claimed to have hundreds of thousands of patients worldwide was put out of business after FDA officials discovered the impostor had been diagnosing and treating nonexistent conditions and purchasing and selling unapproved drugs since 1989.

Edwin E. Kokes, owner of Independent Testing Labs of Grand Island, Neb., was sentenced Aug. 19, 1998, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska to two and a half years in prison and three years of supervised release for sending unapproved drugs and diagnostic analyses through the mail. He also was fined $5,000 and ordered to pay $80,000 in restitution to his victims.

According to the case agent in FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations, the 63-year-old Kokes generated nearly $1 million in seven years by claiming that he could diagnose and treat such medical conditions as AIDS, cancer and allergies from hair and fingernail samples. He boasted of his "technologically advanced laboratory," in which he analyzed hair and fingernail samples with what he termed a "laser" received from a friend at NASA and other hand-held devices, such as an electron microscope. He also told potential patients that the products he sold and various treatments he conducted in his office could cure their diseases, often offering them at inflated prices.

Questions surrounding Kokes' wrongdoings first surfaced during a 1993 FDA Minneapolis district office investigation of another self-proclaimed but uncredentialed physician, Karl Brunkow. Following complaints received about Brunkow's practice, FDA investigators posing as patients learned that Brunkow sent samples of his patients' hair to Independent Testing Labs, Inc., in Nebraska, and that he treated his patients based on hair analyses conducted by the laboratory's owner, Edwin Kokes.

During the investigation, an FDA investigator submitted several hair samples and one fingernail sample from himself and one other person to Kokes' laboratory. From these samples, each of which cost between $25 and $50, Kokes not only identified allergies, toxic blood levels, and problems with glands, reproductive organs, and the liver and kidneys, but he did so for three different people. He then prescribed his products--Zymex, Immuplex and M-Bone--all drugs that FDA has not approved. FDA's Forensic Chemistry Center in Cincinnati analyzed the M-Bone product and found it to be diluted sulfuric acid, a strong irritant, which Kokes was selling for up to $300 per 4-ounce container. Records reviewed later in the investigation revealed that one of Kokes' patients had complained to him that her skin was burned after he advised her to apply the M-Bone topically.

At one stage of the investigation, FDA investigators submitted guinea pig hair to Kokes, and from that analysis, he diagnosed human diseases.

FDA could find no evidence that Kokes was a licensed physician, chiropractor or osteopath, even though he always referred to himself as a doctor and signed his name "Edwin E. Kokes, UMM [ultramolecular medicine], Ph.D," according to case documentation. Other titles he assumed included "Dr." and "CRA," which stands for contact reflex analysis. Kokes also claimed to have been a surgeon during the Korean War.

FDA's case agent, who did not have ovarian cancer but told Kokes that she did, met with him undercover after he falsely confirmed her diagnosis from a hair sample she had sent him to analyze. He told her he had cured 400 to 500 AIDS patients and 97 percent of the 3,000 to 4,000 ovarian cancer patients he had treated with his products. In addition, he told her he often advised individuals with real, known diseases, such as cancer, not to seek traditional medical treatment or continue legitimate medicines prescribed by their doctors. He claimed that traditional treatments could cause the cancer to worsen or even cause death. The agent said Kokes also went on record as saying that he advised his patients not to tell their medical doctors about his treatment plans and convinced some of his patients to sign a waiver to keep office visits and conversations with Kokes from being disclosed to investigators.

During sentencing, defense attorneys argued that Kokes should not be sent to prison because he suffered from delusions and personality disorders and had no grasp of reality. However, a psychiatrist for the prosecution stated that Kokes did not appear to be delusional or psychotic but instead tended to make exaggerated statements. He said the fact that Kokes decided to legitimately register his business as a corporation with the state of Nebraska showed he was thinking rationally.

Kokes pleaded innocent in June 1996 to 11 counts of mail fraud and one count of using a fictitious name or title, but he reversed his plea in September 1997 as part of a plea agreement that allowed all but one count of mail fraud to be dropped. Kokes received the maximum penalty allowed under the plea agreement.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis declined to prosecute Kokes' accomplice, Karl Brunkow, now deceased, because of his age--92--at the time of the investigation. --Carol Lewis

Return to FDA AIDS Fraud Task Forces, Evaluating Medical Therapies

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Office of Special Health Issues, HF-12
March 30, 1999