October 17, 2018
In 2016 and 2017, Max Jaffe’s younger sister received a series of Facebook messages from a guy she’d met during her roughly 12 years as a drug addict.“Yo if you know anyone that needs detox or residential im getting 3300 per client willing to split however u think fair,” read one. “I’d honestly even put you on a clean check fraud hustle and get you 2K tomorrow,” read another. Accompanying these messages were photos of drugs—including a 23-gram block of cocaine—and money, including a fan of $100 bills.
The guy was a patient broker, Jaffe says, paid by rehab facilities to help bring in patients. He certainly didn’t care if Jaffe’s sister—or any other addicts she might know—ever got clean. Watching the broker prey on his sister infuriated Jaffe, but he also knew it wasn’t the only obstacle she faced. He’d managed to rescue her from a crack house in Santa Monica, Calif., a year earlier, only to struggle finding a local, reputable rehab facility that was qualified to treat her addiction and her depression, accepted her obscure insurance plan, and didn’t have a monthslong waiting list. He enlisted his best friend, Stephen Estes, to help. “There are tens of thousands of treatment centers in the country, and two savvy guys couldn’t find a single one to help us when we needed it,” Estes says.
In March 2018, the friends launched WeRecover, a search engine aimed at simplifying the labyrinthine process of getting addicts into qualified treatment facilities—and dismantling the broker system in the process. Read rest here.