The Pain Brokers: How Con Men, Call Centers, and Rogue Doctors Fuel America’s Lawsuit Factory

In this robust true crime narrative, University of Georgia law professor Burch (Mass Tort Deals) exposes a byzantine scam involving stolen medical records, Indian call centers, and crooked physicians. Focusing mainly on three Arkansas victims—Jerri Plummer, Sharon Gore, and Barbara Shepard—Burch describes a 2013 plot to fleece gynecological patients. After illegally obtaining medical records, employees at a call center in India rang up Plummer, Gore, Shepard, and other women who’d received pelvic mesh implants and told them—falsely—that their mesh was carcinogenic and needed to be removed. The callers claimed that, though the women’s insurance wouldn’t cover the explants, they could get loans for procedures to be carried out in Florida if they joined a mass tort suit against their original doctors. Buried in the fine print were exorbitant interest rates on those loans that enriched the explant doctors but left the women destitute. Distraught, Plummer, Gore, and Shepard all contacted small-town Arkansas attorney J.R. Baxter, who helped bring their cases to court in the 2020s. Rigorous and horrifying, this real-life tale of greed run amok will leave readers reeling. Agent: Jay Mandel, WME. (Jan.)