Pill mill doctor who escaped to Haiti via Mexico finally gets her prison sentence
Seven months after fleeing the United States for her native Haiti to avoid being sentenced on drug charges, North Miami Beach doctor Jeanne Germeil learned how long she’ll be a resident of the U.S. prison system.
Germeil, 55, got 210 months, or 17 1/2 years, from U.S. District Judge Ursula M. Ungaro for illegally dispensing opioids and contempt of court pending sentencing.
Trial evidence that led to Germeil’s January conviction on 11 counts of the former crime said she prescribed the opioids at a rate of 687.95 prescriptions per month over 20 months spanning 2016 and 2017. She worked out of Germeil Medical, 951 NE 167th St., in North Miami Beach.
Ungaro gave her 188 months (15 years, eight months) for that. The remaining 22 months were for what happened between conviction and sentencing.
After her indictment in September 2018, Germeil posted $250,000 bond for limited freedom — no passport, special permission needed to leave the federal court’s Southern and Middle Districts in Florida and in her Naples home from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.
According to a criminal complaint against Germeil’s husband, Jean-Rene Foureau, none of that prevented the couple from withdrawing cash from their bank accounts, selling her car, getting her a Florida driver’s license and a Haitian passport in a different name.
She was scheduled to be sentenced April 19. She cut off her electronic monitoring bracelet on March 30. Collier County sheriff’s deputies doing a welfare check the next day found a home with an open front door and no personal items, aside from Germeil’s medical diplomas.
Fugitives tend to go where they know. In this way, Germeil proved common. The doctor born in Haiti and educated in Mexico skedaddled to Mexico and then entered Haiti from there.
On April 10, Germeil sent a lengthy email to the Miami Herald alleging numerous conspiracies in her indictment, conviction and even treatment by the Florida Department of Health.
(She had been disciplined by the Florida Department of Health in 2017 for prescribing oxycodone, Percoset, Dilaudid, Xanax, Adderall and fentanyl to a patient for two years without proper examinations, blood tests or medical history.
And, the Administrative Complaint said, Germeil kept prescribing Xanax, Adderall, oxycodone, and promethazine even after knowing the patient was sharing her boyfriend’s pain medications.)
The email ended with: “I am through playing it fair while the opposing party had been cheating left and right without consequences. ... However that justice system is rigged against people like me. colored, Haitian, successful female physician. Enough is enough! They will get my corpse. I will not obey an unjust and racist system!”
A June 28 tip to the U.S. consulate in Montreal from Haitian nationals living in Canada put authorities on the couple’s trail in late June. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and Haiti National Police found them July 18 outside a hotel in Pointe Sable, Port Salut, Haiti.
This story was originally published November 27, 2019 at 11:28 AM.
