Convicted cancer doctor Farid Fata asks for early release
US Attorney Barbara McQuade on cancer doctor’s guilty plea
In a surprise move, cancer doctor Farid Fata pleaded guilty today to his involvement in a health care fraud scheme. US Attorney Barbara McQuade talks about the case.
Tresa Baldas
Convicted cancer doctor Farid Fata is again requesting release on humanitarian grounds. He insists that he suffers from a rare blood disease that could lead to death if he is not released from prison soon. He also says he is a changed person who shows “sincere remorse” for the harm he has caused his patients.
“He has shown remorse to every soul affected by his crimes, as his past is no longer a part of him,” Fata explains in a petition he himself submitted to the court.
Fata has been in prison for 11 years after pleading guilty to a health care fraud scheme that involved injecting healthy patients with chemotherapy and over-medicating others as they were dying — and collecting more than $17 million in fraudulent billing. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison for crimes that the government says harmed more than 500 patients.
The former well-known Oakland County doctor had previously requested release on humanitarian grounds, but a federal judge, a prison warden and an appeals court rejected his requests.
So he tries again, claiming that he will die if he doesn’t come out and that he is not a threat to society.
“As Fata himself admitted, his crime was heinous,” Fata’s latest lawsuit states, adding that he has turned his life around in prison, helping other inmates graduate from high school and writing business plans for soon-to-be-released inmates who need help rebuilding their lives outside of prison.
“Fata looks 180 percent different today than it did eleven years ago,” his document states.
Perhaps most striking is that he is much more frail.
According to court documents, Fata, 59, was healthy until December 2020, when he contracted COVID-19 and subsequently developed multiple infections of his skin, prostate, bladder, eyes and gums. A hematology expert concluded that he needed Neupogen, a drug that can help reduce infections caused by low white blood cell counts and is often prescribed to cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
Fata says the prison system has not yet approved the drug for him, and a medical director allegedly once told him, “‘Where do you think you are? Are you at Harvard? I’m a doctor to 1,500 patients.'”
Fata, meanwhile, argues that he not only needs this medication, but also needs to get out of prison to receive the medical care that is denied to him behind prison walls.
“The court’s refusal to reduce Fata’s sentence could result in death,” the convicted doctor argues in the court documents.
Dr. Charles Howard, a prison physician and former medical director of the Miami Federal Detention Center, agrees. In a letter filed with the court in June, Howard claims that Fata suffers from chronic and life-threatening infections due to a “lack of appropriate medications” and that there has been an “inexcusable delay in treatment.”
“The medical records provided by Mr. Fata show that his severe recurrent infections were not adequately treated,” Howard wrote. “He has still not been examined by an infectious disease specialist. Moreover, the lack of concern and failure to provide appropriate treatment…represent a deliberate indifference that would amount to malpractice outside of the prison.”
Howard asked the court to release Fata and give him credit for the time he has already served or at least to sentence him to house arrest so that he can receive the medical care he needs.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has until September 20 to respond to Fata’s motion and has announced that it will appeal his early release.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is asking victims and families to write letters to the court before August 26 to respond to Fata’s motion. All written comments must be emailed to Victim-Witness Coordinator Alex Wyatt in the U.S. Attorney’s Office: [email protected]. Submissions must be received before 5 p.m. on August 26. Anyone with questions can call (313) 226-9615.
Fata was arrested in August 2013 after a whistleblower alerted authorities that he was billing the government for medically unnecessary cancer and blood treatments. In 2014, Fata admitted to collecting more than $17 million through fraudulent billing and pleaded guilty to 13 counts of health care fraud, two counts of money laundering, and one count of conspiracy to pay and accept bribes.
Fata, who claims his lawyer deceived him into pleading guilty, also agreed to forfeit $17.6 million and a number of assets related to the case.
Contact Tresa Baldas: [email protected].
