(The Center Square) —Illinois state officials awarded more than $170,000 in taxpayer money to a nonprofit that paid for PTSD injections by the founder's private business because the founder claimed it helps many patients. But an investigation by The Center Square found the treatment claims are not supported by clinical trials.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit's executive director collects two $100,000 salaries for separate but similar full-time nonprofit jobs, where she has raised millions of dollars in government grants, state and federal records show.
The nonprofit, Erase PTSD Now, touts a little-understood treatment for post traumatic stress disorder that involves deep injections into military veterans' necks. The procedure is still being studied — including at federal Veterans Affairs clinics — and has been shown to partially alleviate PTSD symptoms in some people.
But the state grant money was awarded, at least in part, because the nonprofit claimed nearly half of patients "achieved full remission," according to its grant application. That claim of recovery is not backed by the results of clinical trials.
The application also did not mention that all of the money would go to a clinic that is owned by the nonprofit's founder, Dr. Eugene Lipov.
Federal rules say a nonprofit cannot be "operated for the benefit of private interests, such as the creator ... of the organization," according to the Internal Revenue Service. Erase PTSD Now has paid more than $2 million in recent years to businesses Lipov owns as its revenue from private sources and public tax dollars has increased, IRS records show.
"Dr. Lipov does not receive charitable grant funds personally," Coleen LaCosta, the nonprofit's executive director, told The Center Square. "To the extent treatment is provided by a medical entity in which he has an ownership interest, that entity is compensated for the medical services provided, just as any treating provider would be."
But most of the money Erase PTSD Now paid for treatments went to clinics associated with Lipov, in the United States and in Israel, IRS filings show.
Lipov declined to comment for this article and deferred questions to LaCosta. He has been a licensed physician in Illinois for more than 40 years and has not been disciplined by the state, according to state records.
Jeanne Ives, a former Illinois state representative and Republican gubernatorial candidate, said the grant awards show that the state needs better oversight of hundreds of millions of dollars it gives each year to nonprofits.
"Erase PTSD Now is just the type of nonprofit to capture a politician for funding," Ives told The Center Square. "It's run by a credentialed expert for a protected class, veterans, for a harm they suffered. I'm veteran, and if Erase PTSD Now had the solution for erasing PTSD then the veterans administration would be funding it directly."
Several employees of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs, which gave Erase PTSD Now the grant money, either declined to comment or did not respond to requests to comment for this article.
Lipov is a leading advocate of the procedure — called stellate ganglion block — to treat PTSD sufferers. It involves injecting an anesthetic into a cluster of nerves at the base of the neck, with the guidance of ultrasound imaging.
Erase PTSD Now's grant application said the treatments would be performed at a discounted rate of $950 apiece, with each person receiving two treatments.
It's unclear exactly how much money the group has given to Lipov-affiliated clinics over the years.
Ives said the country has an unaccountable "welfare system" for nonprofits that should be changed.
"If people want to start a nonprofit and provide a service, then they should raise the money privately," she told The Center Square. "And if they take any government money, then their books should be opened up and they should be subject to (open records) laws."
'The God shot'
The treatment is approved by the federal government for certain chronic pain, and its use for that purpose dates back about a century. In recent decades it has been used without federal approval to treat PTSD, and medical insurance does not typically cover it.
Lipov and others claim that the procedure is akin to rebooting a computer. It numbs nerves that are associated with people's fight-or-flight response to "reset" them.
Some PTSD sufferers have reported remarkable recoveries after the procedure, while others have said it had little or no effect.
But Lipov, a pain doctor who has a dim view of traditional psychiatry, promotes it as "The God Shot," the title of a book he published this year that tells how he learned to use it for those who suffer from PTSD and hot flashes.
In the book, he describes delivering an ultimatum to one of his nurses who had hot flashes that he said made her increasingly difficult to work with: Be fired or take the shot. She took the shot, according to his telling.
Lipov wrote that the result was "nothing short of phenomenal. The transformation wasn't subtle or gradual — it was as if someone had flipped a switch."
"She spoke softly, listened patiently, and — most shocking of all — smiled," he wrote. "She actually smiled!"
Lipov has also injected at least one dog, according to a video he published on YouTube. The dog had been traumatized by a vehicle crash.
Several years ago he also assisted a former business partner in New York — whom he now claims has committed fraud — by injecting several people in long-term comas, hoping the unspecified treatment might awaken them. The injections didn't work, according to Lipov's sworn deposition in an ongoing federal lawsuit that the former business filed against him.
The lawsuit claims Lipov improperly reneged on a business agreement. Lipov alleges in court records that the former partner stole an investor's money.
In the lawsuit deposition, which happened in October, Lipov testified that he had hired eight public relations firms in the past two decades to promote the injections for PTSD.
Payments to Lipov businesses
Lipov founded the organization currently known as Erase PTSD Now nearly 20 years ago, IRS records show. Until recent years it had annual revenues of less than $50,000.
Initially the nonprofit was called Chicago Medical Innovations. Lipov was listed as its principal officer, based in Illinois.
The organization changed names in 2015 to Global Post-Traumatic Stress Injury Foundation. A different person in North Carolina was listed as the principal officer, according to IRS records. In 2019 it became Erase PTSD Now, with a New York address.
In 2021, IRS records show it changed to a Chicago address and received a massive influx of cash. That was the first year LaCosta was listed as executive director, but the records do not say how much she was paid. Private contributions to the nonprofit soared to about $3 million that year, up from about $45,000 the previous year.
That was also the first year Erase PTSD Now reported it paid Lipov Medical Center for medical services — about $65,000. Its report to the federal government disclosed that Lipov was the sole owner of the medical center — better known as Stella Mental Health — and that he founded the nonprofit.
Its payments to Lipov's businesses increases substantially thereafter. In 2022, the total was more than $680,000.
In each of the past three years, the payments have totaled about $500,000, IRS records show. And they have been identical for each of those years: $478,175 to Lipov Medical Center and $205,250 to Eugene Lipov MD SC.
LaCosta said those figures were errors that would be corrected in future filings, and that they overstated what was paid to the businesses. She did not disclose the updated figures nor what the money was for.
Lipov is now listed as the nonprofit's medical director. Altogether, the nonprofit's IRS reported payments to his businesses were $2.25 million, which exceeds the total the nonprofit said it had spent on "treatment and recovery" in the past five years, according to its recent annual report.
The nonprofit has also sent more than a million dollars overseas in recent years to an Israeli clinic that is affiliated with Lipov.
The nonprofit started getting government grant money in 2024, according to its filings. In that year and in 2025, the total was about $76,000.
That reported figure is lower than what Illinois had awarded the nonprofit through its Veterans Cash grant program, which is funded by lottery proceeds. State records show the state Department of Veterans Affairs awarded the nonprofit $99,000 in 2023 and $74,100 this year.
LaCosta said the nonprofit "did not fully utilize" the first grant.
Last year, Erase PTSD Now changed its address again to a city in Palm Beach County Florida, where LaCosta lives. There she is also executive director of Speak Up For Kids of Palm Beach County, which often gets more than $1 million of government grants annually. The organization helps foster children.
She said she is able to work the two full-time jobs because she has a supportive staff. LaCosta was hired by Speak Up For Kids first, in 2018, federal records show.
True believers
LaCosta said she later got involved with Erase PTSD Now after a friend underwent the injection procedure and benefitted from it. LaCosta said she had cultivated the other nonprofit, "taking it from grassroots to a more formalized foundation and structure," and was hired to do the same for the PTSD group.
She underwent the procedure herself — despite not having a PTSD diagnosis — after she scored "kind of high" on a questionnaire that is used to gauge PTSD symptoms. She said it had a calming effect and "actually cleared up my allergies too, though, for like a year."
Paul Blavin, one of a handful of unpaid board members for Erase PTSD Now, said he, his wife and his two children have had the procedure — also despite not being formally diagnosed with PTSD — and have experienced similar calming effects.
He told The Center Square it is "very similar to resetting your computer by pressing alt, control, delete, and you have a complete reset of the operating system."
Lipov described the effects similarly in a recently recorded talk in Mexico he gave as part of the TEDx series, an offshoot of TED Talks, in which organizers invite experts to ruminate about interesting topics.
Lipov mentioned the dog he had treated and said he had cured the animal of its "Xanax habit." He said a human PTSD sufferer who underwent the procedure was able to conceive a child the day after the treatment, after unsuccessfully trying for 20 years.
And he said the reason his work is not more popular is because many people with PTSD are so stigmatized they refuse to seek treatment. Thus, he has pushed the American Psychological Association to rename the condition PTSI, swapping "injury" for "disorder," arguing that a simple name change would alleviate the hesitancy.
TED, the parent organization that oversees the events, "flagged this talk because it falls outside the content guidelines TED gives TEDx organizers."
TED did not specify which guidelines it might have overstepped, but the organization typically does not permit commercial agendas and "bad science."
