Fraud case intensified before Ind. doc's suicide

[June 17, 2009]  SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) -- In public, ophthalmologist Dr. Philip Gabriele was a "blessing" to patients who counted on him to help them see, an award-winning ballroom dancer and a champion for better eye care.

But for all the glowing testimonials decorating Gabriele's Web site, federal authorities say there were others -- including children -- on whom the Indiana eye doctor performed unnecessary surgeries, billing the procedures to Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers.

Gabriele was found dead in his Elkhart eye clinic Monday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, three days after a 15-count indictment accused him and his wife, Marcella, of financial fraud and injuring patients through unnecessary procedures. His wife's body was found nearby, and authorities say she was killed in what looks like a murder-suicide.

"It is clear to us that our good works here have come to an end," the couple wrote in a letter mailed to South Bend television station WSBT and received Tuesday. "We are at peace with our decision."

In his career and his personal life, Gabriele liked to win. And for years, things appeared to go his way. He opened three successful eye-care practices, winning praise from patients who declared him a "blessing." He and Marcella collected trophies across the country as one of the nation's top amateur ballroom dance couples. He lived in a home in an affluent neighborhood in Granger. A state vision-awareness group, Prevent Blindness Indiana, honored him in 2008 for excellence in medical care.

"They did everything that they could to become the best that they could be," said family friend Susan Manuszak.

Authorities won't discuss the number of patients or amount of money involved in the fraud case. The U.S. Attorney's office and Indiana Attorney General's office declined to comment on the investigation, which led Medicaid fraud investigators, the FBI and police to seize records from the Gabrieles' home and offices in May 2007.

Kristen Kelley, director of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana, said the state filed a consumer complaint against Philip Gabriele in May 2007 after learning of the search but that no patients had filed formal complaints against Gabriele.

The indictment paints a picture of a physician who harmed some patients for financial gain.

From 2004 to 2009, it said, Philip Gabriele falsely diagnosed cataracts and other eye conditions in patients and then did unnecessary surgeries, including some on children. He then billed the procedures to Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers. In some cases, patients' vision worsened and required additional procedures to improve their sight, the indictment said.

Marcella Gabriele changed patient records afterward to justify the surgeries and make it appear they were "medically necessary and reasonable when they were not," it said. She also altered patients' vision results to support the eye clinic's advertising, which claimed 100 percent of those who had undergone a laser procedure at the clinic "see 20/20 or better after their first procedure," investigators charged.

The picture painted by the indictment is hard to understand for those who knew the couple.

Manuszak, who said she saw the couple five or six times a week, said Philip Gabriele wrote a check to help the local Humane Society when it ran out of food and asked his staff to donate to the group instead of buying Christmas presents for him and his wife.

She said he canceled personal plans to see patients who were in emergency rooms with eye injuries. He replaced her father's cornea, did a cataract procedure on her mother and even performed eye surgery on Manuszak's cat under a veterinarian's supervision.

"There was nothing he wouldn't do for people," she said.

But she believes Gabriele, whose nickname was Doughboy because his laugh sounded like that of the Pillsbury character, and his wife, who loved to cook and collected Betty Boop memorabilia, crumpled under the pressure of the investigation.

Though their home was valued at nearly $800,000, federal prosecutors had frozen their assets, Manuszak said. Their legal fees had topped $2.5 million, she said, and they were finding it difficult to pay their bills. "Everything was mortgaged to the hilt," she said.

She said the couple weren't driven by money. They bought their home at a tax sale and remodeled it themselves, she said, and their three cars were an 11-year-old Lexus that had belonged to Marcella's mother, a Mitsubishi with 200,000 miles on it and a 2000 Honda Civic. Family, friends and their three 8-year-old Persian cats, Lynxy, Chrissy and Hannah, were the most important things to them.

"They weren't fancy-schmancy people. They didn't belong to any country clubs," she said. "They didn't do anything highfalutin."

Dan O'Day, who owns a Mishawaka dance studio where the Gabrieles practiced five or six days a week, said the Gabrieles specialized in the fox trot and the Viennese waltz. They stopped coming after federal agents raided the business, he said.

"They were so well-liked," he said. "But sometimes people you like, you don't know what their lives are all about."

[Associated Press; By TOM COYNE]

Associated Press writer Ken Kusmer in Indianapolis contributed to this story.

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