The Cowboy | Icarus | S5-E6

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“Please note this episode contains strong language and mature themes.”

Hello there. Thanks for coming over and checking out this course. I'm Dr. Schneider. As 2017 drew to a close, Dr. Schneider was facing five counts of bankruptcy fraud. But he was still putting himself out there. In fact, he'd found a new calling. Bad conflict is a bitter distraction. It's costly and can be destructive. Dr. Schneider had launched a new career.

He wrote a book called The Healthcare Provider's Guide to Conflict Engagement and Disput Resolution.

And he was taking that message online.

Hugs like can become ugly and frightened. In a series of videos, Dr. Schneider appeared as an animated cartoon version of himself.

“White coat, Bethescope, and of course, boots.”

Mistrust, lies, trickery, and malicious behaviors bring in suspicion and aggression. In one section, he gives an example of a confrontation between a doctor and a nurse. Both played by an AI robot voice. Nurse, what is wrong with you? Do my orders mean anything? Get your job done. The nurse pushes back, warning that the doctor is endangering a patient.

Your dose was 10 times what the patient should get. Dr. Schneider doesn't mention that he'd lost his license in Wyoming for his role in the death of a patient that involved over prescribing. You were wrong, Dr. Not me. Now it might seem a little strange for someone so steeped in conflict to suddenly become an expert in resolving medical disputes.

“But Dr. Schneider was claiming to be a new man, literally.”

He was now going by the name Michael Schneider instead of John.

This great transformation was coming at a critical time for Schneider. He was facing up to five years in a federal prison.

If he could persuade a judge or a jury that he'd truly changed, he might not go to jail at all. He would just ride off into the sunset. I'm Leon Nefak. What happens when only fans becomes more than just a side hustle? Only fantasy is an in-depth look at the world's newest profession, and how the rules of human intimacy are being rewritten online. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or binge all episodes of only fantasy add free, only unautable.

I'm Razajafri, and in the new season of The Spy Who, we go back in time to meet Benedict Arnold, the spy who betrayed the American Revolution. As America fights for freedom from Britain, Arnold emerges as one of the rebels greatest generals, but when his loyalty is pushed to the limit, he turns spy and advises a plot to shatter the rebellion and make George Washington a prisoner. Follow the spy who now, wherever you listen to podcasts, you can also listen to the full season of The Spy Who betrayed the American Revolution

early and at free, unautable. From audible originals, I'm Laura Beal, and this is Dr. Death, the Cowboy. This is Episode 6, Icarus. At the federal courthouse in Billings, Montana, in the winter of 2017, Prosecutor Colin Rubitch took his seat in a small meeting room, facing him across the table was Defense Attorney John Smith.

Rubitch knew him well. John Smith was a pain in my butt. He would fight for his clients, quibbling over the smallest details, any prosecutors nightmare. And now, he'd been hired by Dr. Schneider to fight five charges of bankruptcy fraud. Rubitch assumed that they were there to talk about a deal, but...

John's position was we were likely going to go to trial. Rubitch tried to level with him, the evidence was overwhelming. John, if I were in your position, I would not want to go to trial. You've got to know that if you go to trial, a lot of the ugly facts in this case, they're going to more likely come out. Rubitch looked for a sign that he'd gotten through to him.

He would give the non-answer, which is, yeah, I understand what you're saying, and I'll talk to my client. To Rubitch, the exchange said everything about the man at the center of the case.

Now, when you're in a defense turning that position, it's complicated, right, because they are your boss to a certain extent. And so you are given marching orders. Rubitch had once been a defense attorney himself.

“The biggest complication factor is your defendant, and I think Schneider was a huge complication, because nothing could ever be Dr. Schneider's fault.”

As the weeks went on, Dr. Schneider held firm insisting through his attorney that he was innocent, until Dr. Schneider had a sudden change of heart. On the 18th of April, 2018, phased with a potentially stiff sentence, Dr. Schneider pleaded guilty to one charge of concealment of bankruptcy assets. It would now be up to the judge to decide his sentence. For months later, on a warm summer's day at the courthouse in Billings, Montana, a crowd of people filed into the gallery of the snowy mountains courtroom.

Families, former patients, lawyers, people who had spent years waiting for this moment. Among them were Russell Monaco's family, his mom, Judy, and one of his daughters.

And there was bankruptcy trustee Joe Womack, the man who'd first uncovered Schneider's fraud.

All of them would be testifying at that day's hearing. It made me a little nervous, but I wanted to put in my two cents worth to try to make sure that he got punished for what happened and that it wasn't minimized. I thought he had heard a lot of people, and I thought he had to pay for it. They had each been invited by prosecutor Colin Rubit. I viewed this as an opportunity for the greater universe of conduct for him to be held somewhat accountable for that.

“The whole crime that he committed was the lynch pin, but it was important for the court to know and to understand all of things that led up to it.”

The court room came to order as judge Susan P. Waters took the bench. Mallory Monaco was the first member of the Monaco family to address the judge.

I still have all these amazing memories we shared as a family, and I wish we could have had the chance to make a lot more.

She had been 14 when her dad had died under Schneider's care. She was now a grown woman 20 years old. I'm scared that since he passed away, while my sister and I were so young that I will forget the little memories I cherish the most, that is one of my biggest fears in life. The court room listened to her words in silence.

“Someone who is a five and a seven year old, that gun punches you because you just think the one thing you want out of life right at this stage in your life is to be able to see your kids grow.”

And she spoke about the loss of her dad and just how devastating that was.

Then, Russell Monaco's mom, Judy, stood at the podium. At first, she seemed to struggle to get the words out.

I'm going to get through this. This is the last thing I can ever do for my son. She told the court that she believed Dr. Schneider had started hiding his money within days of Russell's death. It is now obvious to us that Russ' life meant nothing to him. It's all about the money. Because of his actions, we've been put through hell as a family for the last five years. Finally, she pleaded with the judge. Please your honor, do not let him walk out of this courtroom without having to suffer some serious consequences for what he has done.

Not only to my family, but for his total disregard for the laws of this court. Then, it was the defense's turn. Dr. Schneider and his lawyer had come up with their own plan that filed a sentencing memo stuffed full of letters of support. His wife Michelle wrote about how she'd met him when she'd been working in L.A. as a nurse. Although he was in arguably handsome, it was his commanding personality that caught my eye. He was neither boastful nor conceded in his God-given talents.

Instead, Dr. Schneider was, she said, a man of quiet integrity, who goes out of his way to quote, "offer the strong hand on the shoulder of a concerned cowboy."

“There was also a letter of support from Dr. Mike Levy, Schneider's old pal from his time in L.A.”

I just wanted the judge to understand that taking him out of the practice of neurosurgery from my understanding would not be useful in any way.

And would basically detract from his life and from just medical care in general because he's good at it.

There were letters of support and notes from patients, Dr. Schneider had helped, including from his time at the VA Hospital in Iowa. And the reader's digest article about how his skill and quick thinking had saved a woman's life after a horrible accident. But there were no letters of support from doctors or nurses in Montana or Wyoming where it had spent his entire career in private practice. The letters were one part of Dr. Schneider's plea for leniency, but what really mattered was what he would say on his own behalf.

He rose to speak. The hearing wasn't recorded, so his words are read by a member of our production team.

“Your honor, thank you for this opportunity to speak.”

I am so very sorry.

Dr. Schneider described his upbringing.

According to him, he did not start out as a middle class kid from L.A. I did not come from wealth and privilege as a young small chubby boy in the 60s. I grew up in the rough streets of Irish Catholic South Boston at the hands of a predatory Catholic church. I was severely bullied and lived through physical and emotional abuse. In addition, my parents could be ruthless with punishment.

When we looked into this, we found a different story. Far from being raised on the rough streets of South Boston, he grew up in Hingham, a wealthy coastal enclaves south of Boston.

And in fact, in an interview for his pre-sentence report, Dr. Schneider himself described his upbringing as "normal" with no abuse,

save his mother's occasional silent treatment. But now, as he stood in front of the judge, Schneider painted a picture that was far more gritty. I did hold deep-seated scars and the seeds of anger and resentment toward anyone that I perceived a bully. He seemed to acknowledge his feud with Dr. Biles and the anonymous letters. I let my anger and rage overwhelm my actions.

I did behave very badly, escalating a conflict and then suffering the consequences of that unchecked fury. He said he was heartbroken at Russell Monaco's death and had great compassion and empathy for all his patients. He apologized for the mistakes he made during the bankruptcy process for sabotaging and cheating. But now he said that was all over. Your honor, I stand before you today a man in transformation.

I've learned valuable lessons from all this conflict and this criminal act. My priorities are re-aligned and I am blessed by his grace. To make a man's Dr. Schneider had brought with him a $35,000 check for restitution. I strive daily, reflecting in prayer, determined to be a good father, a good husband.

“Your honor, my life is a cautionary tale, and I share it openly.”

But whatever you decide your honor, I accept as my due punishment. Schneider sat down. All that remained now was the judge's decision. The prosecutor, the patient's family's and Schneider himself, all waited to learn his fate. I'm Raza Jaffrey, and in the new season of The Spy Who, he opened the file on Benedict Arnold,

the spy who betrayed the American Revolution. America is fighting to free itself from the British Empire, and one of its foremost generals to Benedict Arnold. He's a smuggler-turn battlefield hero, and admired for his aggressive tactics. But when a war wound, a new wife, debts and politics test his loyalty to the Macs, he turns spy, and devises a plot to shatter the revolution, and help Britain capture rebel commander-in-chief,

General George Washington, and that plot would make him the most infamous traitor in US history. Follow the spy who now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

While Joe Womack waited for the judge to deliver the sentence, he reflected on Schneider's words in the courtroom.

“I really thought that he was a pathological liar that had just done this without any regard to the harm that he caused people.”

But he had no illusions about what usually happened in cases like this. Financial fraud that doesn't involve violence, or a gun, or that sort of thing, my experiences. People like that don't get sentenced as harshly, as somebody that uses physical violence to steal or break into property. Whether the judge would see this as more than a white-collar-runner-of-the-mill financial fraud case was what they were all waiting to find out.

And finally, the judge shared her decision.

“She told Dr. Schneider that she believed that the events leading up to the bankruptcy provided a window into his character.”

He had lied repeatedly, and he had done so in order to deny his patience the opportunity to try and get justice. Then she turned to the letters against Jimmy Biles. It was she said, a sordid episode. She told him, "When you take an oath to tell the truth, and then you lie, that's not honorable, Dr. Schneider." Next, she came to his offer to pay back $35,000. It was better than nothing, she said.

But Dr. Schneider still had access to much of his fortune. It was sitting in trusts owned by his family.

Judge Waters told him, "You could have a means by which to come in here and pay your institution in full, and really demonstrate in good faith how remorseful you are." The judge said it was possible that he had truly changed in the years since his crime, but she did not believe that his remorse was real. In order to achieve that he genuinely empathized with his patience, then she came to her decision. It is the judgment of the court that you be committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons for a term of 24 months.

The prosecutor's table Colin Rubicz looked over at Dr. Schneider. He had this sort of droop of his head and looked down, and so I thought maybe he got through to him. Joe Womack, though, remembers it differently. Schneider threw a temper tantrum. He got mad, slammed paper down, turned, and yelled at his attorney, and clearly wasn't very happy. There was one place Dr. Schneider did unload his thoughts. About a week after his sentencing, he posted on his blog. This isn't Dr. Schneider's voice, but this is what he wrote.

"I've lived the life of Icarus. As with ever heroes journey, the Greek tradition ends in tragedy. I have lived well and laughed that the lawyers beating drums and soliciting my accusers satisfied they will never find peace. If their ancestors are in heaven or hell, I will find them and torment them as they have tried but failed to torment me."

“You have to wonder what kind of punishment Schneider might have received if he had made these remarks to the judge.”

Just days earlier, Schneider had sat in the courtroom and watched Russell Monaco's mother Judy as she described the trauma of burying her son. But in the blog, Schneider reserved a particular venom for the Monaco's. He described Judy as, quote, "a caustic and pedantic woman." And when he wrote about the Monaco's attempts to seek compensation for Russell's death, he questioned their motives. Since Wyoming is the wild west where politics and background deals are encouraged, a malevolent and stochophantic, plaintiff lawyers circle like the parasites they are,

the Monaco clan lifted enough sewer lids and found their lawyer. Next, he turned his attention to Alan Kenop. Alan had been left dependent on prescription opioids after Dr. Schneider performed two spinal fusions. In the blog, Schneider called him a drug-addicted miscreant. He described Alan as a man who's tobacco and alcohol ruined his spine and I cared for for ten years. He said Alan was "wining" because his bones did not fuse. He described Alan in the other patients pursuing claims against him as, quote, "a racket of circle jerks."

He noted the street where Dr. Bob Doratsky lived. "The hounds are released and promised to visit my rivals." When we asked him about the blog, Dr. Schneider's lawyer told us that Dr. Schneider was maligned and attacked by competitors and former patients and he harbored some understandable resentment. Any rational person would defend their name and career. But when we read the blog to Schneider's old friend Mike Levy, he had a very different reaction.

He wrote that. I mean, we all have people we dislike and scenarios. We dislike. It seems that he was just hanging on to it and just not able to let it go. But it wasn't inconsistent with the man he had known.

“I think that I have a good understanding of who he is and an understanding who he is. I can see where the things that really defined who he was and defined his success.”

Also, our things that would lead to these problems, the ability to fixate absolutely and completely on a clinical scenario with a patient maximizes your positive results. And it sounds like taking the personality and the approach that really led to a great deal of success during his training just didn't work in a number of scenarios when he was no longer there. For Joe Womack, the sentencing wasn't quite the end of it. One day, he was sitting in his office when the facts machine began to shoot out paper.

It was a really nasty picture. Somebody was faxing a pornographic image and the main actor was labeled Joe Womack. The implication is that I'm fucking everybody over. It wasn't long before the photo landed on the desk of Colin Rubit. Jeez, I don't get paid enough for this.

“It had been sent to him by some of the attorneys representing patients.”

They had received an unmarked letter, hostmarked from San Diego, which was where Dr. Schneider was living at the time. I don't know if this was Dr. Schneider or not, but I don't know who else would have been interested enough to do this. We did ask Dr. Schneider about this, but he declined to comment.

The identity of the sender has never been proven.

Joe Womack didn't spend much time thinking about it. He focused on the numbers. He felt it done all he could to try and claw back Schneider's assets. In the end, he recovered about $2 million, much of which came from the sale of the whispering winds ranch in Wyoming. But Schneider's finances had been so complicated, untangling them at taken years.

“By the time it was over, most of the money had been eaten up by legal and administrative costs.”

What remained went to patients. They didn't get very much. It wasn't nothing, but it certainly wasn't anything close to the damages that they had suffered.

Alan Kenop had a claim worth $1 million. In the end, he received just over $83,000.

The family of Russell Monaco had been pursuing Dr. Schneider for $2 million. They received just over $166,000. They didn't get compensated anywhere near with their road. When we asked Schneider about this, his lawyer blamed the high cost of the bankruptcy on Womack, who's, quote, "controversial methods," he said had increased costs unnecessarily.

Another patient who was operated on after Schneider declared bankruptcy received nothing at all. I won't call him Dr. Schneider anymore. To me, just Schneider. After the USA today's story broke, Anthony French, the Marine from Iowa with a brain tumor, reached out to his senator, Joni Ernst.

Dr. Schneider proclaimed that he had removed all of the tumor. She spotlighted Anthony's story in a veteran's affairs committee hearing.

It turned out that Dr. Schneider had never removed the tumor.

Members of the committee, Dr. Schneider never should have been hired to treat our veterans. Anthony had hoped that all the attention might help him find someone able to remove the tumor, but a lot of time had passed since his first operation. He saw a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic.

But he said, "You're not going to find a neurosurgeon now that's going to touch you."

“Because he said, "I guarantee you have an 80% chance of being blind.”

And a 50% chance to just be in dead." Anthony hired a lawyer and tried to get compensation from the VA. The legal side of everything goes slower than molasses on the cold winter day. My lawyers said, "I can't foot the bill on this." He said, "We need to get some high salute and lawyer involved in this."

And we searched, and we searched, and they all kept saying the same thing. You're going to have to hire expert witnesses, which could cost 80 to $200,000. If you got that money in your pocket, we'll do it. But we're not going to put the money up front. So Anthony was left with nothing.

No compensation and with the tumor still to this day in his brain. His house sits in perpetual darkness to help with his intense headaches, which are made worse by light. He's been warned that one day the tumor will likely cause him to go blind. For Anthony, there's no way to move on.

I do my daily reflections and sniders always end on them,

and they're never good. You know, and I'm not supposed to be that way, but I can't help it. I always wish bad on him. You know, you call him Dr. Death. That's a pretty good name for him, because it's already been so disappointing. Loosen everything I've already lost, that I don't think I could live with being blind.

I don't want to live with being blind. When we asked Dr. Schneider about Anthony, he told us via his lawyer

“that the accusations were "baseless" and that he doesn't remember Anthony.”

When we followed up with more information, his lawyer did not respond. Dr. Schneider did everything he could to appeal his sentence, but after months of legal wrangling, he was forced to admit defeat. He reported to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego to begin his two-year sentence.

The following year, he was out on supervised release. He and his wife Michelle moved to a small town in Oregon. They settled into a four-bedroom property on a cliff overlooking the ocean, purchased for $1.1 million. De Prosecutor Colin Rubic, it's an outcome that's hard to stomach.

I've seen so many people do such horrible things. Sell their souls, really, for what is essentially stuff and money.

“And Schneider is, of course, one of the ones that sticks with me.”

Because here's a guy who, to this day, I am sure he is living a very, very comfortable life.

He's living a life that most people would never dream of.

So many of the defendants that I come in contact with really have never had an opportunity. And then I see a guy like Schneider and I just think, "What haven't you been given?" And it's sad because I don't know of anything that could be done.

To get him to see the damage that he has done to people. And that is just tragic to me. We did approach Dr. Schneider to take part in this series. At first, he seemed inclined to participate. We sent him a list of topic areas that we hope to discuss.

But after that, he was drew. He did, however, provide us with documents and other materials, including several lengthy statements from his lawyer. In Dr. Schneider's view, he was a successful surgeon who helped thousands of people. He argues that we focused disproportionately on a handful of negative outcomes.

He says that surgery is inherently risky, and that adverse outcomes do not, in themselves, constitute malpractice or unethical conduct. He also told us that the malpractice lawsuits that followed him throughout his career in private practice

were all ultimately dismissed or settled without any admission of wrongdoing.

He maintains that those who accuse him of wrongdoing are competing surgeons and disgruntled patients that are motivated by a professional rivalry and marketplace disputes. He describes the allegations against him as negative anecdotes and unsubstantiated claims. In the end, the official record of Dr. Schneider's career amounts to one conviction for bankruptcy fraud

From what we can find, 19 of his former patients or their families brought claims implicating Schneider, none ever made it to trial. They were all either settled without admission of wrongdoing or withdrawn.

To this day, many feel like justice has never truly been served.

It was about the money. Back in Wyoming, Kathy Ewan, the woman who started out our story, was working out her own journey on the path to healing. The illegal things about money got him in trouble. That's a strange dichotomy if you think about it.

Should have been the opposite to hurt so many people and not be punished for that. Most stakes happen, I'm the first one to say that mistakes happen. But one or two mistakes with people. That's one thing. But tens of them?

So slap his hands about the money. Take his money away, whatever. But how do you give back?

“How do you make him give back to all these people when they've lost?”

Kathy thought about suing Dr. Schneider.

My dad always said, "Don't let anyone live rent free in your head."

But in the end, she chose not to. I had to get Dr. Schneider out of my head and out of my life. We needed to get Dr. Schneider out of our family. And so I talked with all three of the kids and said, "We let go of this. We let go of this now.

Don't bring him in. He's gone." I've had intense emotion talking about him in this interview. And almost, I'm surprised at how well I have tried to block him out.

“Finally, I'm not sure I'd recognize him on the street, honestly.”

Schneider's behavior and the mythology that developed around him throughout his turbulent career got me to thinking about something very specific. His cowboy boots. Some doctors just find them comfortable. Some, especially here in my part of the world, in Texas, grew up in them.

But in Schneider's case, there seems to be more to the boots than comfort or fashion. At some point, he chose to go through the world as a cowboy. He moved out of Southern California to the frontier states of Wyoming and Montana to make his fortune. By Hollywood myth, the cowboy depends on no one, remains steadfast and answers mostly to himself. By most descriptions, Schneider was a cowboy in the most modern sense.

He moved quickly and boldly and sometimes recklessly.

The problem is an operating room, or the US healthcare system for that matter,

can only handle so much shoot from the hip. State medical boards, which are tasked with raining in dangerous doctors, move slowly and deliberately. We are bad at calling out physicians in our own hospital that are colleagues. We are bad at that for a number of reasons, but there isn't really an entity that has teeth that oversees that. Schneider's former colleague, Michael Copeland, says that means the job of raining in unsafe doctors often falls to the patients themselves.

I think in the United States, we rely heavily on malpractice litigation to regulate physician behavior. While that has a lot of downside to it, because of the large amount of money involved in the larger amount of money never makes anything better. There isn't a plan B.

“The truth is that it's not just Dr. Schneider who made money from his surgeries, so did the hospitals he worked in.”

As Dr. Narodsky told us, there could be an incentive not to look too hard. More than that, Dr. Schneider moved between small rural hospitals and hopped from state to state. No one person ever saw the whole picture. And sometimes even when the system does eventually work and strips a doctor of their license, it still isn't enough to protect patients. Just ask a net, Richard Hopkins sister.

Why would you allow him to go to another state and practice? No one should have hired him. They knew his license had been stripped.

A net and all the other patients and family spoke with us because they're still seeking a sense of justice.

“They're trying to heal from their trauma even today.”

They don't want something like this to happen again. That's my hope, too.

But one thing I know about cowboy stories, even when the law restores order, it isn't long before another stranger rides into town.

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From audible originals, this is the 6th and final episode of Dr. Death, the cowboy, early and ad-free right now.

From audible originals, this is the 6th and final episode of Dr. Death, the cowboy. I'm your host, Laura Beale. Executive producers are Russell Finch and Marshall Louis.

“Our senior reporter is Zachary Staufer. Tom Wright is our senior producer.”

Our associate producer is Mohammed Ahmed. Joe Wheeler is the senior story editor. Senior development producer is Rachel B. Doyle. Our production managers are Sherry Huston and Sarah Mathis. Our associate director of production is Lotha Pandya.

Fact checking by Jacqueline Coletti, Sound Design and Mixing by Nicholas Alexander and Mark Pittam. Sound supervisor is Marcelino Villapando. Production services provided by novel. The executive producer is Max O'Brien for novel. Special thanks to Lindsey Graham. Head of Creative Development at Audible is Kate Naveon. Head of Regional Content North America is Marshall Louis.

The Chief Content Officer is Rachel Giata. Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC. Sound recording copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC. [BLANK_AUDIO]