Update: He pleaded guilty, and the people he defrauded are getting their day in court to look him in the eye and talk about what they suffered at his hands. This guy is utter scum, I hope he gets the whole 175 years! (More details on what patients suffered at the link.) Kudos to the employee/doctor that ratted him out.
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/cance...emo-healthy-patients-faces-sentencing-n385161
A Michigan doctor who misdiagnosed patients with cancer and then bombarded them with unnecessary treatments will have to face his victims — who lost their health, savings and trust — when an emotional sentencing hearing opens this week.
Disabled auto worker Robert Sobieray is hoping to be front and center in the Detroit courtroom when Dr. Farid Fata learns his fate for using patients as cash cows, telling some of them they were deathly ill with diseases they didn't actually have.
In 2010, Fata diagnosed Sobieray with a rare blood cancer and subjected him to monthly infusions of chemotherapy and three weeks of radiation — expensive treatments that he said made his teeth fall out and his body twitch uncontrollably.
After Fata was arrested in 2013 and charged in what a prosecutor said was the "most egregious" case of health-care fraud in U.S. history, Sobieray went to a different oncologist and learned that he'd never even had cancer.
"I have so much hatred towards Fata. His name causes an instant headache," Sobieray, 62, told NBC News. "He gets my stomach turning. It is hard to explain…the things I want to do to that guy I couldn't say in public.
"I asked for a seat right up close at his sentencing," said Sobieray, who joined other ex-patients on a bus to the courthouse Monday morning. "I hope he gets life."
Federal prosecutors are seeking a 175-year sentence for Fata, who pleaded guilty to fraud in September, admitting he raked in millions from insurance companies for needless treatments at seven clinics in eastern Michigan.
Fata, who lived in a sprawling mansion in ritzy Oakland Township and ran seven upscale clinics across eastern Michigan, declined to comment through his attorneys. The sentencing memorandum drafted by his lawyers is under seal.
The hearing that will determine whether he spends the rest of his life in prison opens Monday in federal court in Detroit and will last at least four days, with a parade of victims set to testify against Fata, who turned a small one-doctor office into a lucrative medical empire in less than a decade.
A doctor who worked for Fata and gave information about him to the feds said justice for the victims will come not only in the form of a long prison sentence but through change to prevent a repeat of "this type of horrific torture and fraud."
"We need to uncover and correct the fundamental reasons behind the collective failure of our medical system at all levels which enabled this despicable fraud [to continue] for such a long time," said the doctor, Soe Maunglay.
The breadth of Fata's misdeeds was laid bare last month in a sentencing memo from prosecutors, who revealed for the first time that a total of 553 people allegedly got unnecessary treatment — amounting to 9,000 injections or infusions that cost insurance companies and patients millions.
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While Fata told healthy patients they were sick, he sold false hope to the terminally ill in an effort to convince them to keep buying treatments that would not extend their lives, authorities charged.
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The government says that Fata didn't just lie to his patients — he bullied them to keep them from finding out the truth.
"Fata employed a number of tactics to maintain control over his patients and their care, including controlling access to patients' files and remaining on call even when other doctors were rounding on his hospitalized patients," prosecutors wrote.
"I need my money!" Fata wrote in one email about a patient with a $51,000 outstanding balance.
In requesting a 175-year sentence, prosecutors compared Fata to Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years even though he was in his 70s.
"In many ways, he is worse than Madoff, in that he wreaked damage on not only his victims' bank accounts, but their bodies," they wrote.
Sobieray said he wants to make sure Fata never gets out of prison, but he knows the sentencing won't be the end of his personal nightmare.
"I don't know if I'll ever have closure because every day I wake up I don't know what's going to happen to me," he said. "I feel something that he's done to me every day.
"I hope it never happens again to anybody and everybody questions what their doctors are doing," he added. "I don't know if I can trust a doctor again."
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