PHOENIX — A Valley man accused of using a fake doctoral degree to portray himself as a licensed psychologist has entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors.
Scott Keeling-Torrez agreed to plead guilty to fraudulent schemes and possession of drug paraphernalia, both felonies, on Wednesday in Maricopa County Superior Court. In exchange, prosecutors said they would dismiss four other felony charges including forgery and perjury.
Maricopa County Superior Commissioner Barbara Spencer, who presided over the plea hearing, told Keeling-Torrez that he faces a likely sentence of five to 12 ½ years when he’s sentenced on March 7.
Inside the courtroom, about a dozen former employees and clients of Keeling-Torrez watched as he accepted the plea agreement. Afterward, they said they were disappointed his case wouldn’t go to trial.
"It just hurt a lot of people. You feel manipulated and betrayed,” said Christina Hickson, a former employee.
They plan to attend next month’s sentencing in hopes of sending a message to the judge.
“I hope he gets the max,” said Mariah Benally-Camarena, another former employee.
Many of the employees who attended Wednesday’s court hearing worked for Keeling-Torrez at Therapy Trust Behavioral Health in Phoenix. The outpatient, substance-abuse treatment center abruptly shut its doors last year. The employees said they thought their boss was a licensed psychologist.
At that time, he was already under investigation by the Phoenix Police Department, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and the Arizona Board of Psychologist Examiners. All three launched separate investigations after getting complaints, alleging that he was not a licensed psychologist.
The psychology board issued Keeling-Torrez a cease-and-desist order in September, telling him to stop portraying himself as a psychologist.
“I think this individual is unregulatable. And we, as the psychology board, have an obligation to protect the public,” board member Aditya Dynar said at a meeting where the complaint was reviewed.
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office alleged in court documents that the 44-year-old used forged documents to engage in a “years-long” pattern of fraudulent behavior, making false representations to the public, clients and employers.
A search warrant of his home revealed a UCLA diploma, college transcripts and a resume – all forged – and correspondence with an employer where he called himself “Dr. Scott Keeling-Torrez” and uses the Ph.D. title.
He also had 60 credit cards and several expensive vehicles registered in his name with vanity plates that said, “DRPYSCH, PYSCH and PYSCH2,” according to court records.
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All this came to light because of a child custody case, where Keeling-Torrez submitted what prosecutors allege was a sworn, false affidavit in court proceedings in late 2021. He was identified as “Dr. Scott Keeling-Torrez” in the affidavit and used the titles “psychologist, PhD.”
The affidavit said Keeling-Torrez provided coaching and mentoring services to two children who were the subject of a custody dispute between a father and grandmother. The father, Matthew Garner, was seeking more visitation time with the children, who lived with their grandmother.
“In my professional opinion great harm would be instilled in these children” if the father were re-introduced in their lives, the affidavit signed by Keeling-Torrez states. The children are “happy and feel very safe” with their grandmother, the affidavit goes on to state.
The grandmother, who is their guardian, lives in Arizona. Garner lives in Georgia, where the court case was filed. A judge in the child custody case in Georgia declined to change the visitation order.
Garner couldn’t find any record of Keeling-Torrez being a licensed psychologist in Arizona. So he filed complaints last year with the Phoenix Police Department, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and the Arizona Board of Psychologist Examiners. All three launched separate investigations.
“It harmed my case greatly; it’s still going on today,” Garner told the psychologist board last year.
Keeling-Torrez and his attorney, Michael Tamou, told the psychology board that he was nothing more than a behavior coach and mentor to the boys. They said the affidavit was prepared by the boy’s grandmother, and Keeling-Torrez’s involvement was limited to signing the document.
In court documents, they maintain that signing the affidavit was “a mistake” and that Keeling-Torrez did not intend to misrepresent his qualifications or deceive anyone.
But state regulators say he crossed the line.
Board member Joseph Stewart said Keeling-Torrez detailed mental-health diagnoses in the affidavit that were better served coming from psychologists and psychiatrists.
“Not from someone with no license whatsoever,” he said.
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It is a violation of Arizona statute for a non-licensed person to use the designation “psychologist,” the psychology board said in its cease-and-desist order.
The board didn’t check to see whether Keeling-Torrez’s UCLA diploma was fake. But the attorney general did, saying in court records that UCLA positively identified that his purported Ph.D. degree in psychology is an “outright forgery.”
A UCLA spokeswoman told ABC15 that “there is no one in the records by that name.”
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes told ABC15 in an exclusive interview that these types of alleged medical imposter cases are on the rise.
“We will continue to prosecute these,” she said. “And we’re going to be very aggressive on this because people are getting hurt in these cases.”
The ABC15 Investigators have been exposing medical imposters for years, taking viewers inside the underground world of unlicensed healthcare. Last year, a Phoenix woman who opened a clinic and posed as a psychiatrist and treated dozens of patients was sentenced to five years in prison.
In the coming months, ABC15 Investigators Dave Biscobing and Anne Ryman will be investigating how state officials have handled medical impostor cases in recent years. If you have a tip, you can reach Dave and Anne at investigators@abc15.com.
