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November 2, 2007

Pair sentenced for writing false steroids prescriptions

PROVIDENCE -- A doctor and former doctor were sentenced this morning for writing false prescriptions for steroids and human growth hormone.

Ana Maria Santi, 69, a former doctor of New York, was sentenced to two years in prison, and Dr. Victor Mariani, 73, also of New York, was placed on home confinement for one year.

The two had previously pleaded guilty to charges in U.S. District Court, Providence. In July, Santi pleaded guilty to conspiracy, drug distribution, and health care fraud. In March, Mariani admitted to conspiracy and distributing steroids and hGH.

Santi had written thousands of false prescriptions across the country, including hundreds in Rhode Island, according to prosecutors.

In talking about the danger of steroids during Santi's sentencing hearing, prosecutor Adi Goldstein, an assistant U.S. attorney, said that Mariani had prescribed steroids for James Proulx, the Smithfield man accused of punching and seriously injuring Rhode Island State Trooper Brendan Doyle in June.

Later this morning, Mariani was sentenced to 12 months home confinement on electronic monitoring, followed by two years of probation. He’s only allowed to leave his home to attend church and medical appointments, go to work, and perform community service – 10 hours a month for three years.

He must also pay a $6,000 fine, $2,600 for a special mandatory assessment, and forfeit the $34,000 he earned from writing the prescriptions.

-- With reports from Journal staff writers W. Zachary Malinowski and Amanda Milkovits.

Both the federal prosecutor and the doctor’s lawyer asked the judge for leniency in sentencing, because Mariani is elderly and in poor health. He’d cooperated with law enforcement in the investigation, Goldstein said, and there was no fear that he’d return to his crimes.

U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith agreed. “I think he was clearly used in this case by unscrupulous individuals,” Smith said.

When questioned by the judge, Mariani halted at times, unable to hear. His lawyers whispered the judge’s questions in the doctor’s ear, and then fitted him with earphones that didn’t seem to help.

In a voice with an accent at times difficult to understand, Mariani said that he’d asked some people – unclear who he’d asked – about whether it was OK for him to write prescriptions for patients he wasn’t seeing. Another physician was seeing them, he said, and then telling him what prescriptions to write. “They said, It’s OK. It’s OK,” the doctor said.

His license to prescribe medicine was retired in March, but he still has a license to practice medicine.

Now, Mariani said, he was working part-time in a private office, practicing medicine.

At that, Goldstein asked the judge to have Mariani surrender his medical license. “It’s an honor he forfeited,” she said. But Smith stopped short, saying he would leave that issue up to the New York board. Instead, the judge forbid Mariani to reinstate his license to prescribe medicine.

Posted by Jack Perry at 2:36 PM | Permalink

November 2, 2007

Pair sentenced for writing false steroids prescriptions

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