The Dr. Kenneth Pettine drug investigation: 'I was destroyed'

In hindsight, Sherri Kaspar feels weird about the Fudgsicles.

Nationally renowned spinal surgeon Kenneth Pettine bought them for her after he performed a procedure that Kaspar said left her without use of her legs and triggered relentless, debilitating infection.

Pettine stowed the treats in a freezer at McKee Medical Center in Loveland, scrawling her name on the box he bought for her to enjoy post-surgery.

Kaspar used to think the gesture meant Pettine was her friend. Now that Pettine is a convicted criminal barred from practicing medicine, she considers the ice cream a symbol of the doctor's knack for manipulation. 

“He tried to buy me off,” she said during an interview at her Kersey mobile home.

That incident was a long time ago  — 26 years ago, to be exact. But Kaspar's experiences illustrate the two vastly different versions of the Johnstown surgeon arrested in June 2016 on suspicion of prescription fraud.

Pettine's supporters paint him as a man of faith, an Eagle Scout, a brilliant surgeon with “hands of gold” who financed college educations and saved children from disease and neglect with his own money.

Others describe a darker side of Pettine: A drug-addled smooth-talker who botched surgeries, lied on medical records and used his position of power to secure an endless stream of prescription drugs. Several former patients said they went to Pettine for help and emerged from surgeries in excruciating pain, suffering from mistreated infections and lifelong disabilities.

Maybe you saw Pettine in the news last year. It was a big story.

On May 2, 2016, Kenneth Pettine was a well-regarded figure in the medical field who'd performed 12,000 spinal surgeries. He had a $2.4 million mansion and ownership stakes in three medical practices and a surgical center.

Then his minority partners at Johnstown's Premier Regenerative Stem Cell and Wellness Centers turned him in. The criminal investigation that followed left Pettine stripped of his medical license and saddled with lawsuits and misdemeanor convictions.

He'd allegedly botched three spinal surgeries in less than a week and forged prescriptions for his personal use of everything from the narcotic painkiller hydrocodone to the erectile dysfunction drug vardenafil.

“My life was normal on May 2 of last year,” Pettine said during an in-person interview with the Coloradoan facilitated by crisis communicator Andy Boian. “And then within weeks following that, (my) minority partners had gone to the police, the medical board, the press. I mean, I was destroyed in the press with all kinds of accusations.”

Pettine says those accusations were part of an elaborate scheme his partners orchestrated to force him out the practice and take the business for themselves.

Kaspar doesn’t buy it. She said she’s glad Pettine will never operate on another patient.

“The minute I woke up (from surgery), I knew I was in trouble,” she said. “And it just went from bad to worse.”

Previous:Johnstown doctor deal results in misdemeanors, lost license

Kaspar, who has since been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, still relies on an electric wheelchair and a caretaker. She’s learning to accept she’ll never return to work.

She blames the man she once considered “a wonderful friend,” the purveyor of Fudgsicles and hope that she’d one day walk again.

“I am never out of pain,” she said. “Never.”

A rat on the ship

Days before Pettine's life changed forever, police officers swarmed the surgeon’s 10,000-square-foot Fort Collins home and Johnstown offices.

It was around this time that Kandace Stolz got a text from her boss.

“We have a rat on our ship!” read the text, allegedly sent from Pettine to Stolz, now the director of Premier Regenerative Stem Cell and Wellness Centers, according to a Johnstown Police investigation.

Indeed, there was a rat on Pettine's ship.

It was Stolz, then a minority partner at the practice who’d known Pettine for about 10 years. A chain of events made Stolz uneasy about her business partner, according to the report.

First, a patient said Pettine had appeared “intoxicated” and “incoherent” during a consultation. Next, the medical director at nearby Arete Surgical Center told her Pettine had botched three spinal surgeries in a one-week period and ordered an assistant to alter the operating notes after the surgery, according to the investigation report.

Then an angry patient called the office, claiming she’d  been billed for a visit with Pettine that had never happened.

Stolz and Arba Boci, Pettine’s other minority partner, went to police April 27, 2016, with stories and documents that purportedly showed a man in a downward spiral, likely abusing prescription drugs and putting patients in danger.  

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Investigators considered the allegations a matter of urgency. In six days, Pettine was set to operate on five more patients.

As Detective Doug Slocum dug into the case, accusations against Pettine piled up.

A physician's assistant told Slocum about the allegedly bungled surgeries and altered operating notes. Boci told Slocum that Pettine was taking home expired drugs from Premier’s on-site dispensary.

The doctor forging prescriptions was at the center of the tangled web of allegations.

The list of drugs involved reads like a pharmacy inventory: Percocet. Ambien. Hydrocodone. Testosterone.

The prescriptions, mined from Pettine’s in-house patient file by his partners and reviewed by Slocum, allegedly came from five doctors. 

But each doctor denied having written at least some of the prescriptions, according to the investigation report. Some said the details of the prescriptions didn’t match their employment history. One said he’d never heard of vardenafil, an erectile dysfunction drug he’d supposedly prescribed to Pettine in a 100-day dose.

“One hundred days,” he remarked. “That’s a lot of drugs.”

One of the doctors said the handwriting on a prescription he'd supposedly written looked like Pettine's.

Pettine also signed some of the suspect prescriptions using his own name, making them out to close friends and family members.

Investigators found a prescription for diet pills Pettine had written for his hair stylist to treat “knee pain.” Many of the prescriptions were for Ambien, a potentially habit-forming sleep-aid meant for short-term use.

When investigators searched Pettine’s home, they found plastic bags full of unidentified pills. 

Inside an open safe in Pettine’s medical assistant’s office, officers found an empty prescription bottle labeled “Oxymorphone HCL” — an opioid painkiller — and someone else’s name. They also found several empty prescription pads presigned by the five aforementioned doctors.

And then there was the phone call.

In a conversation recorded covertly by Stolz, Pettine admitted “multiple times” to writing fraudulent prescriptions for Ambien, a potentially habit-forming sleep aid, according to the police report and a portion of the phone call reviewed by Coloradoan reporters.

“I don’t think taking Ambien is a problem,” Pettine said in the call, which is detailed in the police report. “Obviously how I did it is wrong … I thought, it’s just Ambien, it’s not a big deal. But it is! What I did is illegal.”

In the call, Pettine added he functioned at a very high level and didn’t “need to follow the rules.” He admitted to writing a prescription for someone else and keeping it for himself.

“I mean, who is ever going to find out about that?” he said.

Pettine told the Coloradoan the phone call was “taken out of context.”

A judge deemed the evidence sufficient for Pettine’s arrest. On June 11, 2016, Pettine turned himself in at the Johnstown Police Department. He posted $10,000 bond and left the Larimer County Jail the same day.

But he wasn’t guilty, he said.

“That never happened,” Pettine told the Coloradoan of the allegations that he faked prescriptions for Ambien and other drugs. 

Pettine said his minority partners altered Premier’s operating agreement behind his back shortly before his arrest, adding a clause that allowed them to buy out his share of the practice at a discount if he was convicted of a crime involving fraud. Coloradoan reporters reviewed the operating agreement and confirmed this clause was in the document. He said his partners violated his privacy in accessing his medical records and sharing them with police. 

“Only those people know their motivation for coming forward, but the information provided by them was quite concerning despite any financial stake they may have had in the outcome of the criminal case,” Robert Axmacher, deputy district attorney and the lead on Pettine’s case, said in a written statement to the Coloradoan.

After months of court appearances and negotiations, Pettine’s attorneys struck a deal with the Larimer County District Attorney’s Office.

Pettine would lose his medical license permanently, a rare punishment. Between 2007 and 2016, just 30 Colorado doctors had their licenses revoked, according to the Colorado Medical Board. 

He’d complete 200 hours of community service, serve five years of probation and pay $1,000 in fines. He’d undergo substance abuse evaluation.

The deal whittled the 11 felony charges against Pettine down to two misdemeanors: One for obtaining a controlled substance through fraud or deceit and one for possession of a Schedule 3-5 controlled substance.

Pettine told the Coloradoan he pleaded guilty only to two counts of “possession of Ambien.” He declined to say how he obtained the Ambien or how often he used it, but said he’s “paying his debt to society.”

The reason for the dismissal of Pettine's felony charges remains a point of contention.

Pettine said the DA's office dismissed the felonies because he didn’t commit those offenses and proved as much in a meeting with prosecutors. He said he reviewed six prescriptions with prosecutors and proved the legitimacy of each to clear his name.

He said he was prescribed oxycodone and hydrocodone after undergoing a hip replacement and stem cell procedure.

The prosecutor who met with Pettine had a different account of the meeting.

In a written statement to The Coloradoan, Axmacher said Pettine and his attorneys “provided information that plausibly explained some” of the prescriptions written to Pettine’s friends and family members.

“Had the case continued to trial, some but not all of the felony counts would have been dismissed,” Axmacher wrote.

“The resolution in this case provided a just result to hold Pettine accountable and address the people’s concerns,” he continued. “First and foremost, Pettine is now prohibited from practicing medicine or issuing prescriptions at any time in the future.”

Who is Kenneth Pettine?

Kenneth Pettine has an impressive resume. Personally and professionally.

The Fort Collins native, a husband and father of three sons, brought a Ukrainian girl to the U.S. and paid for her life-saving surgery and American college education. He all but adopted a friend of his son’s who was left homeless after his father went to prison for killing his mother.

Over the years, Pettine pirouetted among a bevy of hospitals, surgical centers and medical practices in the area. He's listed as the principal investigator for 18 FDA studies and was regularly listed among the nation's top spinal surgeons by Becker's Hospital Review.

Pettine collected accolades as his practices and personal finances appeared to prosper.

In 2002, he moved into a $1.8 million mansion with 12 bathrooms and a guest house in Fort Collins. In 2004, he and Jeffrey Donner, his former partner, opened a new facility, the Spine Institute, which started in Loveland but moved to Johnstown. In 2013, the two broke ground on the Arete Surgical Center in Johnstown.

But even as Pettine’s career soared, trouble brewed.

Pettine faced one of his first Colorado lawsuits in 1993, two years after he founded Rocky Mountain Associates in Orthopedic Medicine with Donner in Loveland. A former employee, Deanna Ball, sued the men for allegedly forcing her to resign after she’d blown the whistle on fraudulent billing practices at their office.

A jury found the men guilty and awarded Ball a million-dollar settlement, but Judge Arnaud Newton dismissed the settlement and Ball said she couldn’t afford to keep pursuing the case. 

In 2008, Pettine was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and obstructing a peace officer.

A Larimer County sheriff’s deputy stopped Pettine after spotting the doctor speeding his BMW down a partially flooded road, a bottle of wine propped between his legs, according to his arrest affidavit.

The officer arrested Pettine after he failed a roadside sobriety test and tried to pull away from him twice, documents show. 

Pettine's resisting arrest charge was dismissed as a result of a plea deal in which Pettine pleaded guilty to driving under the influence. He was sentenced to one year of probation, 24 hours of community service and $723 in fines.

Meanwhile, the tally of malpractice and negligence lawsuits filed against Pettine mounted.

Before his drug-related arrest last year, he’d faced nine malpractice and negligence lawsuits in Colorado in a 20-year period.

One of those lawsuits was filed by Kaspar, the woman who said she couldn’t use her legs after Pettine performed the 1991 surgery that led to debilitating infection.

Kaspar kept seeing Pettine for six years after that operation.

Then she got a call from an attorney who thought Kaspar might have a malpractice case.

After Kaspar told Pettine about the call, the doctor got “really angry,” she said.

“He said, ‘Well, I did the best I could,’” Kaspar recalled, paraphrasing her recollection of the conversation. “‘I can’t help it if something went wrong. You’re just going to have to suffer through it.’”

Kaspar’s friend and doctor had begun behaving strangely, she said.

“Sometimes he’d be so hyper, and other times it was like he could hardly keep his eyes open, like he’d had a bunch of pain meds or something,” she said.

“He changed from being this wonderful friend to this creep.”

Kaspar, whose claim fell out of Colorado’s two-year statute of limitations for malpractice, is familiar with the impact pain medications can have on a person. She takes Norco, a narcotic painkiller that can be highly addictive, daily but she said she is conscious to take less than her prescribed dose.

She remembers Pettine prescribing her large amounts of pain medication despite her protests.

Other former patients have similar stories.

Themes emerged from a Coloradoan review of 15 malpractice and negligence lawsuits filed against Pettine since 1996. Nearly all of the nine resolved suits appear to have been dismissed with prejudice, which can mean a private settlement was reached, the plaintiff stopped pursuing the lawsuit or a judge decided the case shouldn't go forward.

Plaintiffs in active malpractice and negligence lawsuits allege Pettine fabricated evidence to support risky and unnecessary procedures, responded insufficiently to post-surgery infections and lambasted injured patients with caustic remarks.

In one suit that reads as a microcosm of the group, Amber Gould of Castle Rock alleges Pettine fabricated evidence of a medical condition to justify a dangerous and painful surgery in 2015.

The lawsuit alleges Pettine botched the procedure by using bone screws that were too long, leaving Gould in excruciating pain.

Gould called Pettine’s office several times to report the pain. Pettine told her some patients have mental issues "and there was nothing else he could do for her," according to the complaint.

Gould later consulted with another doctor, who discovered during a scan that her bone screws were too long.

But the damage was done, Gould claims. Today, Gould can't do everyday tasks like cooking and cleaning and works a part-time desk job because of back pain, according to the complaint. Her suit is ongoing.

Cara Vandiver was 56 when a filing cabinet fell on her at work. The former circus performer and country Western dancer went to Pettine for a disc replacement surgery in 2010 and left with permanent nerve damage.

The doctor initially called her his “star pupil,” the Colorado Springs resident recalled during an interview in Fort Collins. Pettine gave her a small pin shaped like a ladybug and said he’d treat her like a “queen bee.”

After Vandiver’s surgery allegedly went awry, she came to Pettine’s office complaining of intense pain and using a walker.

“He took one look at me, threw his hands up and left the room. I only saw nurses from then on,” said Vandiver, who suffers various ailments that she attributes to nerve damage and over-prescription of pain medications after her surgery.

Vandiver sued Pettine for negligence in 2012, but she said she backed off about a year later because of mounting legal costs.

Boian, Pettine’s spokesman, said the lawsuits were “motivated by greed” and called them frivolous.

By the time Judge Julie Kunce Field sentenced Pettine on April 25, 2017, he faced six pending malpractice and negligence lawsuits.

He was no longer a partner at Premier Stem Cell. His other practice, Rocky Mountain Spine and Orthopedics, was evicted from its Johnstown space after Pettine reportedly failed to pay rent for two months. His house was listed for sale at $2.73 million. (It’s still on the market.)

Pettine’s friends and family say he doesn’t deserve what he got.

About 45 people — from fellow doctors to the managing shareholder of Pettine's accounting firm — wrote glowing character references to Field when it came time for Pettine’s sentencing.

Pettine is “an angel in the science of medicine,” wrote a former patient.

“(I) would not hesitate to allow him to treat my family if required,” wrote Michael Masteller, board chairman of the Colorado Spine Physicians Association.

Slava Gubenko, the Ukrainian-American woman whose life-saving surgery Pettine arranged and paid for, told the Coloradoan she lived with Pettine and his family for months and never saw him intoxicated.

"It's been heartbreaking to see what Ken is going through," she said. "It's all lies."

In some ways, the trial of Kenneth Pettine is over.

His criminal case is closed. And though he can never again legally sign his name on a prescription pad, he can continue medical research.

He can label the permanent revocation of his medical license as “retiring,” which he does. Once his five years of court-ordered probation are up, his 200 hours of court-mandated community service logged, his $1,000 in fines paid, he could be done with the criminal justice system.

But he likely hasn’t seen the inside of a courtroom for the last time. His former patients will make sure of that.

Six of them continue to pursue malpractice and negligence lawsuits against him.

They say Pettine promised to change their lives, and he did — for the worse.

They want Pettine to pay.

If you ask the doctor, he already has.