A Detroit-area doctor
who authorities say gave cancer treatment drugs to patients who did not need
them -- including some who didn't actually have cancer -- was sentenced Friday
to 45 years in prison.Dr. Farid Fata, 50,
pleaded guilty in September to giving cancer treatments to misdiagnosed
patients, telling some they had a terminal blood cancer called multiple
myeloma. He pleaded guilty to 13 counts of Medicare fraud, one count of
conspiracy to pay or receive kickbacks and two counts of money laundering.
Federal prosecutors
called him the "most egregious fraudster in the history of this
country." To Fata, they said, "patients were not people. They were
profit centers."
Fata forfeited $17.6
million that he collected from Medicare and private insurance companies. Some
553 patients received medically unnecessary infusions or injections,
prosecutors said.
The
hematologist-oncologist gave an emotional apology in court, saying he was
"ashamed" of his actions.
"I have violated
the Hippocratic oath and violated the trust of my patients," Fata said,
according to CNN affiliate WDIV. "I do not know how I can heal the wound.
I do not know how to express the sorrow and the shame."
But to the dozens of
Fata's victims who filed into U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of
Michigan throughout the week to watch his sentencing, his apology doesn't
matter. Many will live with the effects of his, at times, unnecessary
treatments, for the rest of their lives.
As Geraldine Parkin,
the wife of one former patient said in court, many were "tortured until
their last breaths."
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