Undercover Reporting

A Pulitzer Prize winning series on medicaid fraud in New York.

Life Magazine outed a number of medical quacks in this expose, including Antone Dietemann, with a degree in sanitary engineering, was making on-the-spot diagnoses of illnesses "with a magic wand and an array of containers that hold various body tissues." A patient he diagnosed, Jackie Metcalfe, was actually an undercover agent for the state of California. Outside in a car, Life correspondent Joseph Bride made notes, hearing everything that transpired through a radio transmitter hidden in the agent's purse. Inside, Billy Ray, a photographer for the magazine, posed as the agent's husband to document the encounter. Life collaborated with officials in exchange for the right to publish the photographs.

Reporters, hired to work with phony references in nursing homes for the poor, uncover filthy conditions, unqualified employees (as evidenced by their own hiring), and undignified care of the elderly, often in the name of profit.

Frank Sutherland spends a month at Central State Psychiatric Hospital in Nashville, exposing its inadequate condition. The newspaper first determined there was an empty bed before having him admitted, so as not to take up a needed place, and Sutherland left without notice, but the newspaper alerted authorities on his departure, so no police time would be spent searching for him.

One of the best-remembered undercover investigations of all time. Nellie Bly feigns insanity to get herself committed to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's (now Roosevelt) Island.

These are stings to expose scam artists, quacks and hucksters who prey on the needs or naivete of their customers, clients, or patients.

Medicare and Medicaid fraud have been perennial reporting topics since the 1960s, often requiring undercover techniques to amass specific details.

As a reporter for the New York Tribune, Julius Chambers went undercover as a patient to investigate conditions at the Bloomingdale Asylum following reports of abuse at the institution.