An Arkansas doctor has been arrested along with seven other people for their alleged roles in a long-running fraud and kidnapping scheme that targeted patients who’d been receiving treatment inside a hospital’s behavioral health unit.
The Department of Justice contends psychiatrist Brian Hyatt was the mastermind behind the scheme at the Northwest Medical Center Behavioral Health Unit in Springdale, which he headed between 2018 and 2022.
Also arrested in the federal probe were advanced practice registered nurses Devon Talbert and Lindsey Hess Goucher, registered nurse and former director of the Northwest Medical Center Behavioral Health Unit Miranda Newburn, former admissions and assessment referral coordinator at the behavioral health unit Robert Green and former behavioral health unit techs Georgette “Gigi” Rice, Owen Benjamin, and Collyn Harlan…