Beware of Christl King w/ First Class Medical Transcription - Scammed Posted: Jun 18th, 2021 - 4:41 pm
I wanted to share my experience so that no one else gets scammed like I did. Back on April 6, 2021, a woman by the name of Christl King posted a help wanted ad on one of the MT Facebook groups. She said that she was in need of a part-time subcontractor to help with her IME account. I wasn't looking for a job, but having had a good bit of experience with IME work and enjoying that type of work, I responded to her post and she asked me to call her, so I did. We had a nice chat and she made it sound as though she had a fairly decent amount of work that she needed help with. I told her that I do already have a full-time job, so I was only looking for a side gig to kind of do here and there as sort of a supplement. She said that would work perfectly and that she could just text me whenever she had work available. Long story short, she had me sign a contract and hired me at 10 cpl (that rate alone should have been my first red flag). I was to be paid monthly. She then proceeded to give me only 4 jobs during the month of April and only 3 jobs during the month of May, even though I repeatedly told her that I could do quite a bit more than that and would like to do more than that, but she kept telling me that she didn't have anything else to give me and would let me know when she did. Strange. Why did she even hire me if that's all the work she had for me? It didn't make any sense whatsoever. With how little work she was giving me, I was quickly realizing that it really wasn't even worth my time or effort, but I hung on to see if it would pick up. These were LONG jobs (about 30-60 minutes each) and she required that I listen to the entire dictations twice to make sure I wasn't missing anything since this doctor has a tendency to speed mumble quite a bit. I was not paid any extra to re-listen to these dictations all the way through for a second time, despite how incredibly time consuming it was, but she was very adamant that I absolutely MUST do this. She did pay me for April's work; however, we are now going into late June and I STILL have yet to be paid for May's work. I submitted my May invoice to her on June 1st and I have not seen a single penny. Her contract clearly states that payment will be made no later than 7 days after invoice submission and she had even told me herself that she usually mails checks within 3 days. We are now well past that point.
I have since terminated my services and have sent her emails asking where my payment is, but have received no response. I have now mailed her a letter demanding payment for May's work as well as for the very small amount of work that I did at the beginning of this month. I said that if I do not receive payment in full by June 30th, I will be contacting the client directly to make them aware that she has not paid me. Another thing that I found very fishy was that I just discovered a couple of weeks ago that she has been deleting my intiials from all of my reports that I had transcribed and replacing them with her own, which makes me wonder if she is farming out her work to subcontactors without this physician's knowledge or consent. That would be a pretty massive HIPAA violation and I can't imagine the client would be very happy about this.
Anyway, if you happen to see Christl King with First Class Medical Transcription advertising that she needs help, RUN as fast as you can! In my nearly 20 years of working in this field, this is the first time I have ever been scammed and stiffed like this and had my services essentially stolen. I have had some pretty lousy experiences with various companies throughout the years (as I'm sure we all have at some point), but at least they all paid me in full and on time. I'm sure that she got paid very well for MY work, which she obviously feels that I don't need to be paid for, despite the fact that I took time away from my other job (which actually pays me) to complete this work for her. I hope this never happens to anyone else, which is why I am posting my experience. I am not one to "bash" others and I hate making posts like this, but I strongly feel that this needs to be shared so that no other MTs fall victim to this woman. This industry is already in rough enough shape as it is and the last thing we need are predators like this who take advantage of honest, hard working MTs who are just trying to earn a living. Even if I never see any of the money that she owes me, at least I will have exposed her and warned others to avoid her if she ever posts another ad anywhere looking for help. I have learned my lesson the hard way and will never subcontract for an independent contractor ever again. It's just far too risky.
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