Farid Fata Gets 45 Years in Prison for Scamming Hundreds of Cancer Patients – NBC News

A Michigan oncologist who inflicted excessive and painful cancer treatments on hundreds of patients — many of whom didn’t have the disease in the first place — sobbed as he was sentenced Friday to spend what will likely be the rest of his life in prison, capping an emotional week in which a procession of victims told a federal judge how the scams had ravaged their bodies.

Farid Fata, who operated the racket from an empire of upscale clinics in the Detroit suburbs, began weeping before the punishment was even handed down.

Speaking publicly for the first time since his August 2013 arrest, Fata blamed greed and a “self-destructive” thirst for power.

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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.”

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In court papers, prosecutors said he scammed more than 500 patients, telling some they had cancer when they did not, giving too much or improper treatment to those who did, and persisting with painful and dangerous chemotherapy treatments who no longer needed it.

via Farid Fata Gets 45 Years in Prison for Scamming Hundreds of Cancer Patients – NBC News.