Multiple psychiatrists and at least one victim’s family filed formal complaints with disturbing allegations against Connecticut psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Zelisko in September and October of 2025, but his license to practice was not suspended until ten months later, in August 2026, when the Department of Public Health presented their findings to the Board of Medical Examiners, saying Zelisko was an “immediate threat and danger to the public health and safety.”
Between 2023 and 2025, Zelisko is alleged to have defrauded his patients by presenting his romantic partner, Aleixander Puerta, as a life coach for patients experiencing mental health problems despite Puerta having no credentials, license, or education beyond high school. The pair then began to use those patients to obtain controlled substances for personal use, supply the patients with alcohol and drugs like crack, and fraudulently bill their families, according to the charges leveled by DPH, victim family documentation, and letters from an incarcerated man who claims he used drugs with Zelisko, Puerta, and a patient they were “treating.”
“I’m sort of wondering why it took so long to come to us,” said Board of Medical Examiners member Dr. Robert A. Green during the August 18, 2026, hearing to suspend Zelisko’s license. “It’s just surprising because this has been going on since [20]23, and if some other entity, DPH or whatever, knew about it, it seems to me we should have been apprised of it earlier. This individual appears to be real detrimental to the public and the people with whom he’s interacted.”
“It’s been a long time getting to us,” said Board Chairman Kathryn Emmett. “This is a very serious situation for Connecticut consumers and patients. It certainly appears that way to me and it’s extremely concerning to me that we haven’t had this matter brought to us earlier. Wherever this went into a black hole on its way to us, I would very much like someone to communicate with that area to say this is really worrisome, and we need to deal with an emergency on an emergent basis, not a year later.”
“Obviously, there’s over a thousand documents, so it took a long time for the investigative unit to proceed,” said DPH Attorney Joelle Newton. “It was just referred to our unit less than a week ago, so our unit obviously took action.”
“It was very important, so we worked feverishly to make sure that it got on this agenda,” Newton continued, adding that she would pass the board’s concerns on to DPH officials.
Zelisko’s state license to practice medicine was suspended during the August 18 Medical Examiners Board meeting, and he voluntarily surrendered his controlled substances license on August 21, according to the Department of Consumer Protection (DCP).
Although DPH investigators moved quickly to bring the issue to the board and suspend Zelisko’s license once it made it to them, complaints from multiple psychiatrists were made to other DPH officials roughly ten months earlier.
A practicing psychiatrist in the Hartford region, who asked to remain anonymous to protect patient privacy, was among the physicians who contacted the Connecticut Department of Public Health in late 2025 to raise concerns about Dr. Douglas Zelisko after learning about the experiences of several former patients.
“I filed a complaint immediately,” the doctor said.
The doctor’s initial complaint raised a spectrum of concerns, including for patient safety. The doctor was also aware that several other physicians had independently raised concerns with DPH during the same period.
“The department received concerns from three other doctors beginning as early as August 2025,” the doctor said. “Why did it take a year before any restriction was placed on his ability to practice?”
DPH’s statement of charges cites three doctors: one who was contacted by a patient after Zelisko abandoned them; another who began caring for one of Zelisko’s patients and could not reach Zelisko to obtain the patient’s medical records; and lastly, another doctor who worked in the same office as Zelisko whose patient information was allegedly illegally accessed by Puerta and Zelisko, who then ordered supplies through her Quest account.
The charges also indicate that Puerta was banned from the premises of an inpatient psychiatric facility when he brought illicit drugs to a patient while the patient was hospitalized, although the document does not indicate whether the hospital made a formal complaint.
Even after the suspension of his license to practice, Zelisko remained listed on third-party websites, including Psychology Today, as well as on his own website as a practicing psychiatrist accepting patients. According to the doctor, the listings remained online until the website hosts were alerted to the suspension, after which the listings were removed.
Susan (pseudonym), the mother of one of Zelisko and Puerta’s victims whom they allegedly supplied with crack and alcohol and subjected to sexual abuse, says that she reached out to DPH, the Department of Consumer Protection and the Drug Enforcement Agency in January 2026 after she received a detailed letter from an inmate in a Massachusetts correctional facility warning her about Puerta and Zelisko.
The poignant and troubling letters from J.W. (whose identity we’re protecting) to Susan detail numerous instances in which he used crack with Puerta and her son while her son was supposedly under Zelisko and Puerta’s therapeutic care. J.W. claimed he was certain that Aleix was using his life coach position to sexually abuse her son.
“I did witness Aleix giving your son crack and meth more than once. I’m not sure if you are aware, but Aleix has no formal education either. He is also unlicensed. I was with him when he spoke to you on speaker phone,” J.W. wrote, describing the phone conversation. “He had you on speaker phone because we were… being intimate and he was also smoking crack the entire time.”
J.W. lists another incident in which Puerta requested money from Susan to take her son bowling: “Needless to say, they did not go bowling. He used that money to buy more crack. I met your son the night Aleix took him out to dinner for his birthday. I met them in the parking lot of the restaurant. When I pulled up, they were in the car already smoking crack.”
According to the allegations and documentation supplied by Susan, Zelisko offered many fake credentials for Puerta, including claiming that he was educated through Yale’s master’s program and had “6,000 hours of patient experience.” The two created a website for Puerta’s life coaching business called Unleash Your Hue, and they registered a business called Integrated Psychiatry LLC in April 2025.
In a prior interview with Inside Investigator and in written complaints to DPH, Susan indicated they were bewildered when their son began to mentally deteriorate, required multiple inpatient hospitalizations, and tested positive for cocaine and methamphetamine when he had never used such drugs before, all while under Zelisko and Puerta’s care.
J.W. wrote that he told state and federal law enforcement agencies of what was occurring, starting with the DEA and “two FBI agents that came to the county jail to speak with me” in September 2025, but feared they were not doing anything. He also states that he informed the Massachusetts State Police.
“I gave them Douglas and Aleix’s names and told the agents that he/they give clients drugs to coerce them into sexual acts. They provided me with a phone number to call to discuss it more, but they never answered,” J.W. wrote, detailing the lengths he went to find Susan’s contact information. “I was about to start contacting news stations, reaching out to government officials and utilizing social media if I had to. A doctor (especially a high profile doctor making nearly a million a year) doing this is exactly the type of thing news stations are made to report. I’m sure it would lead to other victims coming forward. But that will be your decision to make.”
Susan says part of the delay was because DPH needed her son, who is an adult, to come forward with his claims, but he was hospitalized in Maryland and “wasn’t in any mental state to do so.” When they were finally able to obtain a statement from her son in May 2026, she and her husband began to apply “a lot of pressure to DCP, DEA, and DPH.”
“We felt the investigation was unusually slow,” Susan said, although she praised DPH Attorney Newton, whom she called “absolutely fabulous,” and said Newton “expedited the process.”
DPH officials did not respond to request for comment.
Although the allegations involve six patients from Zelisko’s private practice, he was also employed by the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) as a psychiatrist for the state’s psychiatric hospital in Middletown, earning over $400,00 per year.
Zelisko claimed during a September 3 Board of Medical Examiners meeting that he is currently with his parents in Massachusetts and that this was all the result of “domestic violence.” Zelisko did not cooperate with DPH’s investigation or subpoenas for records, did not show up to the hearing with an attorney – or even on camera – has had his Glastonbury house foreclosed on, and faces numerous court actions to collect debts, including to a bail bond company for getting Puerta out of jail in January 2026.
Puerta, who has a history of domestic violence, is reportedly still in jail following an arrest in August. While Zelisko has had his license suspended and will face another hearing to determine whether his license should be revoked, it is unclear at this point whether Zelisko will face criminal charges.
DPH’s investigation alleges that Zelisko ordered massive quantities of controlled substances, including Ketamine, in patients’ names but had them delivered to his personal home and failed to keep proper records of those substances. Regardless, it appears the red flags were not caught by federal or state officials until doctors and victims started coming forward.
“It seems that a number of people recognized serious warning signs and tried to bring them to the State’s attention,” the doctor said. “What concerns me is the length of time before protective action was taken. There should be a faster process for the State to respond to what was ultimately called ‘a clear and immediate danger.’”
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