Cherie Thibodeau, a fraudulent study broker, may not be working her scam much longer.

For the past few months, she has been trying to solicit Las Vegas area doctors for business, using a business card that says, “Cherie Thibodeau, M.D., PhD., Chief Medical Officer/Clinical Operations.” As far as can be determined, Cherie Thibodeau does not have a license to practice medicine, and posing as someone with a medical license is an offense that is under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General’s Office in Nevada.

One Nevada doctor, whose confidence Thibodeau gained, reported her to the Attorney General’s office last week.

Off and on between stints in California State Prison, Thibodeau has operated under several aliases, including Cherie Casio and Cherie Rivard, and last year, started claiming to have a medical degree. During the six years that CenterWatch has been reporting on her activities, Thibodeau has bilked numerous investigative sites across the U.S. out of potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars.

CenterWatch obtained a copy of a solicitation letter from an alert reader who recognized Thibodeau’s name from previous articles in CWWeekly and The CenterWatch Monthly. That letter was sent by “Cherie Thibodeau, M.D.” and “Dr. X” to Las Vegas area doctors on Oct. 3, 2007. The letter states that “Doctor X” has been selected to participate as a principal investigator in a phase IIa post-herpetic neuralgia clinical trial and is looking for “consulting physicians who are interested in referring patients who meet criteria for the study and enroll as possible participants.” Thibodeau promises compensation to doctors for patient referrals, which is unethical according to Good Clinical Practice.

Dr. X became suspicious of Thibodeau during the site review when she gave the monitor a different name  than the doctor knew her by—Cherie Casio. When Dr. X asked her about it, Thibodeau claimed that Casio was her maiden name and that she preferred to use it.

Thibodeau’s typical scam is to promise doctors that she will get them studies and handle administrative tasks for a percentage of the study budget. All payments go through her. Thibodeau starts off paying sites their fair share or enough of it for the first one or two studies and then pays them nothing and can’t be reached. Lately, she’s paid sites nothing at all, defrauding them of funds due them. Most recently, she bilked a site in Ohio out of $5,000.