A doctor who made millions of dollars by putting more than 500 patients through unnecessary and grueling cancer treatments and then billing insurers has been sentenced to 45 years in prison.
The judge, calling Fata’s crimes “huge” and “horrific,” deliberated for about an hour before sentencing Fata to 45 years behind bars.
By then, Fata’s tears were gone. He stared ahead, looking emotionless.
His victims, many of whom wore bright yellow to the sentencing to symbolize the last day Fata would see the sun, remained quiet in the courtroom. Afterwards, their disappointment and anger spilled out.
“It’s not enough,” said Geraldine Parkin, whose husband underwent unneeded chemotherapy.
She, like many others, wanted the judge to impose the maximum possible sentence of 175 years; Fata’s lawyers had asked for 25.
“We expected more,” said Steve Flagg, whose wife, Monica, testified about learning of her misdiagnosis after her leg snapped in half.
As for Fata’s tears, Flagg said: “It was just a show.”
Authorities said they, too, were disappointed in the length of the prison term, but felt confident that it would encompass all, or most, of his life.
U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade of the Eastern District of Michigan called Fata’s scheme “the most serious fraud case in the history of the country.” No prior investigation, she said, included “the kind of stunning physical harm that we saw in this case.”
Noting that chemotherapy is toxic to both cancerous and healthy tissue, McQuade said Fata “gave poison to these people not to keep them alive but to make money.”
NBC News
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