Just as soon as the Howard Awand conspiracy indictment was unsealed late Friday, doctors and lawyers began speculating. While Awand was charged with conspiracy, who was Attorney A? Physician AA? Physician BB? Physician CC? Are these people or bra sizes?

Client 1 wasn't identified as either a man or a woman but was "profoundly and permanently disabled." A few dates of letters were in the indictment, and a few specific amounts probably sent some lawyers to their files to answer the burning question: Am I Attorney A?

On Wednesday, I confirmed that Attorney A is Noel Gage, whose law firm was among those to receive subpoenas for records. Gage did not return my calls Tuesday and Wednesday to say yea or nay. (I haven't identified his client or the doctors in the case. Feel free to drop a dime if you know who they are.)

The personal injury case in the indictment alleged that Awand provided advice to Attorney A and Client 1 concerning both litigation strategy and medical treatment. It's a complex trail of Awand buying medical liens at a discount and then telling the patient to pay the full amount, never disclosing that he was the one buying the liens. He allegedly bought one hospital lien for $130,000 and later asked the patient to pay the full amount of nearly $348,000. Smaller liens for Physician BB and Physician CC were handled in the same way, with an attorney telling the client this money had to be paid from the settlement.

Some in the legal community asked what the crime is.

Las Vegas attorney Robert Eglet, whose firm was subpoenaed for records related to Awand's company, told the Review-Journal this past week, "There may be some ethical issues there, but I don't think it rises to the level of a federal crime, but I'm not a federal prosecutor."

There are other patients out there who had dealings with Awand, a medical consultant who will be arraigned Friday in federal court on charges of conspiracy, mail fraud, honest services fraud, money laundering, aiding and abetting and witness tampering. (The multitude of charges and a prospect of forfeiting up to $7 million seem designed to loosen Awand's tongue.) Awand is in a position to tell who got what ... and whether any judges were involved.

Much of the indictment explains the complicated ways the doctors and lawyers made money without the knowledge of the patient/client and by using medical liens instead of going through the patient's insurance.

One of the disturbing allegations is that doctors who would work with Awand would get protection from being sued for malpractice by the lawyers with whom they were working. That means if doctors were suspected of malpractice, they got a pass, even if a lawyer suspected their medical care might have harmed a patient. Sweet deal for the docs.

I've written about two patients who dealt with Awand, Mary Jane Veirs and Cynthia Johnson.

Veirs isn't Client 1, but what she told me last summer was very similar to what the indictment alleged. She slipped in a casino, hurt her back, sued, and her attorney, Tracy Eglet, Robert Eglet's wife, won a settlement of $1 million. Her contingency fee was $400,000, and Veirs was told she would receive $138,000 after medical liens were paid. She wasn't told that Nevada Medical Investments, a company formerly owned by Awand, bought the liens for $40,311 and wanted her to pay $234,000.

When she heard of Awand's indictment, Veirs said, "I cried tears of joy!"

Johnson, whose personal injury case first made the investigation public in July 2005, told me Wednesday that although she had talked to Awand only over the phone, what he and doctors and attorneys did "was worse than what my car accident did to me. ... I finally feel as though I'm not their victim anymore."

Prosecutors are alleging that doctors conspired to inflate the value of settlements and judgments by causing the patients to incur "costly, aggressive, and excessive medical treatments."

People might have trouble understanding the financial trails, but if prosecutors are able to prove unnecessary surgeries were performed or treatments were designed purely to run up costs to enrich certain doctors and lawyers, that callousness is going to enrage the public.

The entire medical community will suffer.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.