A New Rochelle doctor claims he was lured into setting up an anti-aging clinic in Harrison with false promises of a $1.15 million salary and support for his existing medical practice.
Dr. David M. Lans accused Fountain Life Holdings, of Naples, Florida, of fraud and deceptive trade practices in a complaint filed July 21 in Westchester Supreme Court.
“But for the guaranteed salary, as well as the assurance that his medical practice would continue with the support of Fountain Life,” the complaint states, “Dr. Lans never would have proceeded forward with the transaction with Fountain Life.”
Lans is licensed as an osteopathic physician and has practiced rheumatology, integrative and preventative medicine, age-management and hormone therapy.
Fountain Life is “making 100 years old the new 60,” it declares on its website. Its advanced diagnostics predict and detect future diseases and enable people to stay healthy before they show symptoms.
“Fountain Life is like a country club for precision diagnostics,” according to the website. Patients are called members, and pay an upfront annual fee of $19,500.
Lans says Fountain Life officials approached him in 2021 to open a center in the New York metropolitan area. Initially, he rejected their proposal because he didn’t want to be distracted from his thriving New Rochelle practice.
He changed his mind after he was offered a guaranteed annual salary of $1.15 million for five years and assurances that Fountain Life would support the New Rochelle practice.
Fountain Life would assume the office lease, pay the medical malpractice insurance and equipment financing fees, hire additional doctors to cover for Lans while he was concentrating on the new clinic, and handle billing and collections, according to the complaint.
Lans agreed to contribute his medical practice assets to Fountain’s Wealthy Life affiliate for a 10% interest in Wealthy Life.
Now Lans believes the offers were a ploy.
He claims that Fountain Life offloaded the costs of the new clinic onto the New Rochelle practice. No doctors were hired to cover for him, he says, leaving the office unstaffed most of the week. No capital or operating budgets were provided.
Patient referrals and visits to the once thriving practice declined precipitously.
On June 13, according to the complaint, Fountain Life claimed in a letter to Lans that he had violated their management services agreement by failing to pay a management fee.
Lans claims that Fountain Life charged onerous management and service fees to the New Rochelle practice but failed to provide the services, profited from sales of products while not paying for products, and failed to collect on patient bills.
Fountain Life paid his $1.15 million compensation through the New Rochelle practice, he claims, so as to pay nothing for his services in opening the new clinic.
Offloading costs for the new clinic onto the New Rochelle practice, according to the complaint, artificially inflated the clinic’s net operating income on financial statements that were submitted to potential investors.
Lans says that his initial concerns about the deal were realized.
“Fountain Life failed to support the New Rochelle practice,” the complaint states, “while unnecessarily and deceptively burdening it.”
Lans, who is represented by Manhattan attorney Joseph B. Fiorenzo, is demanding unspecified damages.
Fountain Life did not respond to an email asking for responses to the allegations.
