Hijacking Healthcare: How Fakes, Frauds, & Phonies Were Caught

Marshall Miller:
I’m Marshall Miller, host of Rub Some Dirt in It right here on ReachMD.  No, I really am.  I couldn’t fake this if I tried.

But would it be that hard to fool people into thinking you were something other than you actually are?  Could you pretend to be a doctor or a nurse?  Frank Abagnale almost got away with it. 

On this episode, we will take a look at just a few cases in history where people were definitely fooled by a fake, fraud, or a phony HCP.  Were their intentions Hippocratic, tragic, or psychopathic? 

The 1918 flu pandemic kept lots of people home bound in Chicago, and Julia Lyons, clad in nurse’s whites, ripped off unsuspecting folks by reselling marked up medical supplies at 12x the normal price, delivering the items and taking some if the patients personal belongings before she left.  She had over 50 victims testify against her after she was caught, and although she used insanity as a defense, actual doctors found her totally sane.

More recently, Oneal Ron Morris had the scrubs and stethoscope look when she showed up at a patient’s door, ready to do some damage as a phony plastic surgeon.  Known as “The Dutchess,” she preyed upon women looking for a curvier figure and used fillers that the FDA wasn’t going to approve any time soon.  Fix a Flat, rubber cement, and super glue were a few of her favorites.  Morris eventually killed someone with repeated treatments and has 10 years in prison ahead of her as a result.

Leander Tomarkin was a Swiss fake doctor who became the personal physician for Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy. He claimed to have invented cures for malaria, meningitis, and more.  In truth, he was a college dropout, but his skills as a conman even fooled Albert Einstein once.  It’s all relative, I guess. 

So to recap: Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, and you might make this list on the next episode of Rub Some Dirt in It.