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Jeff Testerman spent his 33-year journalism career at the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) as a beat writer, editor and investigative reporter before retiring in 2012. he was named best reporter in the Tampa Bay area twice and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize five times.
His series about illegal patient brokering, entitled "The Patient Pipeline," sparked a federal investigation resulting in dozens of brokers' arrests, the shuttering of several treatment centers and legislation to ban kickbacks to brokers. The series, authored with Carol Marbin, was awarded the Society of Professional Journalists' "Green Eyeshade" award as the best work of journalism in the Southeast U.S. in 1994.
Another Testerman investigation, this one about organ transplantation, revealed that the family of a Ku Klux Klan member had refused to donate his organs to any non-white recipient, leading to a new state law banning discriminatory practices in organ donation.
In Tampa politics, Mr. Testerman wrote about conflicts of interests surrounding County Commissioner James "Big Jim" Selvey, incompetence and cronyism in the office of Property Appraiser Ron Alderman and misappropriation for partisan purposes by Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson. Each series of stories triggered ethics or criminal probes, and ultimately, the ouster of the three officials by voters.
In the private sector, Mr. Testerman chased down forgery mastermind Matthew B. Cox, who used invented color-coded names - Black, Redd, White - to take out millions in fraudulent mortgages, and later, Peter Porcelli, millionaire owner of the world champion fast-pitch softball team, the Tampa Bay Smokers, who was behind a 165,000-victim credit card scam and an illegal mortgage refinance operation. Both men got long prison sentences.
Mr. Testerman is the co-author of "Call Me Commander: A Former Intelligence Officer and the Journalists Who Uncovered His Scheme to Fleece America." It is the story of John Donald Cody, to be released by Potomac Books in February 2021. Testerman encountered Cody, who was then using the alias, Commander Bobby Thompson, while researching another story in 2010. A series entitled "Under the Radar," written with John Martin and published by the Times in 2011, revealed the Commander's multi-million-dollar charity, called the U.S. Navy Veterans Association, consisted of a phony narrative, the phantom commander and a handful of legal and telemarketing enablers. After the charity was shut down and a dragnet launched to find the Commander, the Investigative Reporters and Editors awarded the "Under the Radar" series its top public service award.
Mr. Testerman is now at work on a book exploring the mysterious life of his brilliant younger brother, who set out to write the Great American Novel after graduating from Princeton, inspired students at schools around the globe, then succumbed to an inner darkness before taking his life in a remote area in Vietnam in 2019. The working title is, "In Search of the Star that Shone Brightest."
A graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Mr. Testerman now lives in the mountains of North Carolina, where he practices digital photography and searches for the secret to the perfect golf swing. He is married to career journalist Nancy Waclawek. They have two children: Amanda, who is a chemical engineer now working as environmental and safety chief at a food processing plant outside Cincinnati, and Joseph, a champion junior golfer who is studying the culinary arts.
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