A resident of Oakland Township, Michigan, Fata pleaded guilty to 13 counts of healthcare fraud, one count of conspiracy to pay or receive kickbacks and two counts of money laundering.
Advertisement
The ex- doctor has agreed to forfeit $17.6 million and a number of assets in the case.
“I have violated the Hippocratic oath and violated the trust of my patients”, Fata said, according to CNN affiliate WDIV.
WATCH ABOVE: A Detroit-area cancer doctor who put patients through unnecessary treatments so he could reap millions of dollars from insurers has been sentenced to 45 years in prison.
“We expected more”, said Steve Flagg, whose wife, Monica, testified about learning of her misdiagnosis after her leg snapped in half.
Then Fata spoke for the first time in public since his August 2013 arrest, his tear-choked words often unintelligible before an overflow audience in a Detroit federal courtroom.
Screenshot via Fox News Michigan oncologist Farid Fata.
Hester, who worked in an emergency room at the time, was devastated when Fata told her she had myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). I’m feeling like I’m standing up for my husband. “This disgusting and diabolical scheme has hurt hundreds of patients and their families and stolen from them something that no punishment from the court can do to make them whole”.
The judge, calling Fata’s crimes “huge” and “horrific”, deliberated for about an hour before sentencing Fata to 45 years behind bars.
“I imagined we were going to show these records to an expert who would say ‘Well, it’s more aggressive than I would be, but it’s within the reasonable bounds of reasonable medical care.’ In fact, quite the opposite”.
In court all week – Fata was described as stone-faced.
“I actually cried”, she said, adding that the educated, Christian man with such training to help people must feel intense remorse.
A McQuade spokeswoman said she didn’t know how much credit Fata could get for behaving himself, and a spokesman with the Federal Department of Prisons didn’t immediately return a call for comment. “My sins are many”, he said.
Fata admitted in court to misdiagnosing and exposing his cancer patients to unneeded and excessive rounds of chemotherapy in order to collect payments from both them and their insurance companies.
Numerous victims also have life-long complications from radiation and chemotherapy treatments they will never recover from.
Advertisement
“I stand before you so ashamed of my actions”, cried Farid Fata. Karadsheh came to know that a different oncologist in the practice was leaving and couldn’t stop himself from asking him the reason, learning that Fata was administering chemotherapy to patients who didn’t need it. In this case the doctor was the enemy in disguise.
