A methamphetamine-addicted nurse practitioner from Pittsburgh who went to federal prison this month has more legal problems when he gets out involving hidden cameras and sex videos recovered last year at his twin brother’s Airbnb in Maryland, where he was staying in violation of court orders.
Larry Goisse Jr., 38, of Mount Washington, who owned two psychiatric practices in Wilkins and East Liberty, self-reported to prison last week after admitting that he wrote prescriptions while his license was suspended.
At sentencing on Jan. 19, he told the judge, Nora Barry Fischer, that he was going to change his life, start a new career and become a productive citizen again.
“I personally don’t see any benefit to myself or the general public by receiving a prison sentence,” he said in a letter.
She did see some benefit, however, and gave him two years.
At the time Goisse wrote that, he knew he was under investigation in Montgomery County, Md., following an incident in Silver Spring in August 2022 involving a police search of an Airbnb owned by his brother Chris, also a nurse practitioner.
He also knew he was at that Airbnb without telling his probation officer or anyone else, a violation of his pretrial release orders.
Police issued an arrest warrant for him on Feb. 1 on charges related to cameras hidden in smoke detectors in various rooms in addition to counts of meth and drug paraphernalia possession, according to a report by the U.S. probation office in Pittsburgh.
Probation officer Jennifer Kirchner said in the report that she received notification of the arrest warrant on Feb. 6. The U.S. attorney’s office didn’t know about the case, and Goisse’s lawyer, Thomas Livingston, didn’t respond to a message.
Federal prosecutors said they won’t be pursuing anything further now with Goisse since he’s in prison.
Goisse had already received something of a break in his federal case. After his arrest in 2019, a magistrate judge, Maureen Kelly, let him out of jail so he could go into meth addiction therapy at the Greenbriar Treatment Center in West Virginia.
Goisse owned Prime Psychiatric Care in East Liberty and Wilkins. But he was hooked on meth. His life fell apart in December 2017 when cops in West View found him passed out behind the wheel of his car with a burnt-end pipe in his pants and a bag of meth.
He pleaded no contest to possession of a controlled substance and driving with a suspended driver’s license, and the state yanked his prescription license in 2018.
But he kept prescribing anyway. Federal agents arrested him on Feb. 2, 2019, for writing Adderall scripts while suspended.
He had faced a range of 33 to 41 months, but Livingston asked for leniency based in part on what he described as Goisse’s battle with addiction and mental illness, his pro bono work for patients and his desire for rehabilitation.
Bob Cessar, the prosecutor, wanted the 33 to 41 months, saying Goisse used his DEA registration to write prescriptions for no medical purpose and also “commandeered” the DEA registration of co-workers to write scripts.
He even had his own mother, who worked in the office, calling in some of the scripts for him. Employees saw what he was doing and told the DEA.
Goisse pleaded guilty last October.
But a few months before that, he had another run-in with law enforcement in Silver Spring, where his brother works and owns the Airbnb.
The U.S. probation office said it doesn’t talk to the media.
But Kirchner’s report said that on Aug. 5, two people called police to a local Target and explained that they found suspicious-looking smoke detectors in their bedroom and bathroom at the nearby Airbnb.
One of them had experience installing smoke detectors and said there were two detectors in the bedroom, one above the bed, and one had a flashing white light.
They felt someone was recording them.
They brought one of the detectors to the Target, where cops found that it contained a hidden camera and a slot for an SD card. The detector was labeled “Jefferson,” the name of the room at the Airbnb where the two were staying; the rooms in the building are named for U.S. presidents with corresponding plaques on the walls.
Police went to the Airbnb and found the detector in the bathroom missing, meaning someone had removed it after the residents left. Officers saw signs in the house noting that public areas were video recorded, but the residents said they did not give consent for cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms.
According to the report, Christopher Goisse emerged from one of the rooms and asked what the cops were doing there. Chris denied any knowledge of the hidden cameras.
Another renter then showed up and gave police permission to enter his room. Police said they found another smoke detector with a hidden camera in a position to film the bed. The switch was set to “on.”
The renter said that one of the brothers had come to his room to manipulate the detector, saying it needed a new battery.
Chris Goisse let police search the house for more cameras.
The officers couldn’t get into the “Washington” room upstairs. Chris Goisse said his brother Larry was renting it but that he wasn’t home.
Police knocked anyway and tried calling his phone, and eventually Larry Goisse opened the door.
Officers got a search warrant and found computers, three fake smoke detectors with hidden cameras, one with an SD card, two alarm clocks with hidden cameras, a USB wall block adapter with a hidden camera and an SD card, three phones, 14 glass pipes and a bag of meth.
A search of one of the SD cards turned up videos of Larry Goisse smoking from one of the pipes and a series of videos of him having sex with a man.
“The unknown male makes no indication during the events that he has knowledge of being recorded,” the report says.
A search of the computer turned up a downloaded instruction manual for the smoke detector cameras.
Goisse told the cops he got the cameras as a gift.
Kirchner noted that Goisse’s prior probation officer had tried to reach him and also called his mother at the time Goisse was in Maryland in violation of his probation. She noted that he also didn’t tell anyone about his contact with police there.
Chris Goisse didn’t return a message left Thursday at his office in Silver Spring.
Larry Goisse is serving his time at the federal prison in Morgantown, W.Va. He’s due to be released in November 2024.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
