Under the Knife

by Diane Fanning

  The controversy wounded Jeane, and in December 1999, she and her toddler daughter left New York to join Tom Parker in the more peaceful Midwestern environment of Chicago. The Post did not want to lose Jeane and offered her a part-time job as Midwest correspondent. Her original agreement called for three days of work each month. Soon, though, the demand for her services expanded to twenty days a month, the Post flying her to Texas, North Dakota, Minnesota and elsewhere to cover stories. Meanwhile, she wrote freelance stories for Chicago magazines, covering weightier stories than the typical celebrity fluff, like a high-profile prostitution scandal—one that also brought a suicide threat to her door. Fortunately, this time, another dead body was not laid at her feet.

  She referred to herself as a “recovering gossip columnist” and vowed she would never return to that work again. “Some days,” she wrote, “I don’t regret leaving at all. Other days I miss Page Six: it’s like a phantom limb that I keep groping for, and I’m still surprised when I realize it’s not there.”

  Then Women’s Wear Daily made her an offer she couldn’t refuse—a job she could fit in with her responsibilities to the Post. They wanted her to write a bi-weekly column on fashion industry gossip for the launch of their new website. Jeane was hooked again on the gossip habit. “Obviously, the world cannot exist without gossip and neither can I.” They produced one or two issues of the zine before 9-11. After that, the project fizzled into nothing.

  Soon she and Tom were married and in early 2002, the Post urged Jeane back to New York to work as a general assignment and crime writer.

  Jeane agreed and the family found a place in Hell’s Kitchen, then eventually moved to a home in New Jersey.

  In the flamboyant and provocative language of the Post, Jeane wrote stories about serial killers, cult leaders, bigamist barbers, child killers, battered but wealthy wives, and sects who abused children. She reported on pivotal events like the tsunami disaster of December 2004. Jeane finally she made her mark with her coverage of the Elizabeth Smart story, which would evolve into a book.

  IN SEPTEMBER, BARBARA NEVINS TAYLOR LEARNED THAT THE state was also investigating Dean Faiello. Their probe was prompted by complaints from Dr. Laurie Polis, Dean’s former employer, and Dr. Roy Geronemus, a physician who claimed he treated a number of patients whose procedures were botched by Dean.

  Now three separate entities—Channel 9, the Post, and the state—staked out the 18th Street office. By September, each had figured out who the other players were, exchanging frequent waves and nods. It was a race to see who would get to the finish line first. The attorney general’s office was at a disadvantage in this contest. They needed enough evidence to convict. The media outlets only needed enough to protect themselves should a lawsuit arise after the story had broken.

  BARBARA MADE AN APPOINTMENT WITH DEAN FAIELLO. AGAIN, the Channel 9 news department extended an invitation to the attorney general’s office to come along as an observer. Again, authorities declined.

  Barbara entered Dean’s offices with a hidden camera. The visit began with a consultation. Dean interviewed Barbara about what she wanted and documented her medical history. Then, he examined her features. “You could benefit from laser resurfacing on your face. To do that, though, I would want to have the other doctor here to participate, since it is a very complicated procedure,” he said, referring to Dr. Frank Spinelli. He went on to explain that on his own, he could use the laser to remove beauty marks or moles. Barbara asked him about the spider veins in her legs. “They can easily be removed with laser,” Dean said.

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “Um-hum, yeah,” he said.

  Barbara noticed that he appeared drowsy and slow, as if he were medicated. Is this just his manner? she wondered. Or is he on drugs?

  Later in the visit, she repeated her query in her best imitation of an airhead: “So, you’re a doctor, so I can trust you? I don’t, I don’t have to worry?”

  Dean nodded his head. “Everything will be fine,” he said.

  “Where did you go to medical school?”

  “I went to the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey,” Dean said.

  He then escorted Barbara into the treatment room where he showed her his laser equipment and demonstrated how he would apply it to her leg. He didn’t explain the medical procedures as a doctor would; he just told her what he could do and how he would do it.

  Barbara left his office ready to write her story, edit her tape and hit the air. Investigators from the attorney general’s office, though, asked her to hold the story—an arrest was imminent.

  MEANWHILE, JANE MACINTOSH, HEARING DEAN WAS GAY, traipsed down to Christopher Street and flashed his picture around. She learned about his former job at The Beach and also heard about his drug problem. She staked out a club he was said to frequent, but Dean remained elusive.

  Surprisingly, Jeane had a skin lesion on her left arm. It looked as if it could be malignant. A physician performed a biopsy, and though the results were negative, without that testing, she would have run a huge risk having it removed: if it had been cancer, the excision would have destroyed the outward indications of malignancy, allowing it to spread unseen to other parts of the body.

  Jeane took advantage of the situation and made an appointment with Dean for a consultation. He told her that he could remove it with two or three laser sessions. The charge for each treatment was $250. In response to her questions, he assured her that he was a doctor and detailed his credentials, just as he had done for Barbara.

  Then Jeane asked the really important question: “Does it need to be biopsied?”

  “No. There’s no need for a biopsy,” Dean said.

  “Even though I have a history of cancer?”

  “There is nothing to worry about,” he assured her.

  TO A HANDFUL OF PHONY PATIENTS FROM THE MEDIA, AND TO the authorities, Dean admitted to using the anesthetic lidocaine, the sedative Diprivan and the highly addictive synthetic narcotic fentanyl in the course of his treatments. There was no longer any doubt that his actions were criminal. But Barbara sat on her scoop until the arrest date, getting more impatient with each passing day. She knew Jeane MacIntosh was ready to publish her story in the New York Post. Barbara had to break the story first.

  On the day of the planned arrest, Barbara couldn’t wait any longer. She and a crew went down to Dean Faiello’s office.

  DEAN AND GREG STAYED AT GREG’S APARTMENT IN TOWN ON the night of Monday, September 30. The next morning before Dean left for work, the phone rang. It was his receptionist.

  “There’s a camera crew at the door wanting to come into the office,” she warned.

  “You can’t let them in there,” Dean told her.

  The crew—and particularly Barbara Nevins Taylor—intimidated her. She told Dean that Barbara would not go away.

  “Put her on the phone,” Dean said.

  Dean listened to what Barbara had to say, then, hoping she would just leave, he told her, “I don’t want you in the office with cameras.”

  Dean hurried off to the office and when Barbara spotted him, she rushed toward him, putting a microphone to his face. “Why are you practicing medicine without a license?” she asked.

  “Oh, I’m not,” he said. “It’s not so. It’s simply not so.” He pushed past Barbara and went into his office.

  When he returned home that night, the stress was written in the furrows of his brow. He told Greg that he did not understand why he was singled out for an investigation—why anyone wanted to shut down his business, why he was under attack.

  Channel 9 broke the story first on Friday, October 4. They aired portions of Barbara’s hidden-camera video from her visit to Dean’s office. The story contained a short clip of Dr. Laurie Polis saying, “Yes, this sounds like practicing medicine without a license.”

  Soon, Barbara’s attention drifted away from the great pretender. She had exposed Dean Faiello to her viewers and to law enforcement. The authorities, she
believed, would pick up where she left off, preventing Dean from posing as a doctor again. He presented no further threat to public safety.

  JEANE MACINTOSH PAID ONE LAST VISIT TO DEAN, CATCHING him on the street corner by his office. “Dean, you told me that you were a doctor.”

  “I did not. I am not a doctor and never said I was. My website never referred to me as a doctor. You may have misunderstood me. If I was unclear or made that mistake, I apologize.” As he spoke, he looked her in the eye with unwavering intensity and delivered his denials with all the appearance of pure sincerity. He was so convincing that Jeane, who’d been lied to by the best, began to doubt herself. She had to listen to the audiotape of her undercover visit again to make sure she had not misconstrued the meaning of his words.

  The New York Post broke the story in print that Sunday. The story quoted Dr. Polis: “Having a laser in your hand is like having a gun. You need to know what you’re doing. You can get a mole lasered off by one of these practitioners and three years later, you’re dead of brain cancer.” Jeane’s headline for the story read: “He’ll Make Your Skin Crawl.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DEBRA FAIELLO READ ABOUT HER BROTHER’S LATEST MISADventures in the Post. She drove over to Dean’s home to talk to him and make a plan.

  Having a brother in this kind of trouble had to be difficult for Debra. She seemed such a straight arrow. She attended Rutgers University, where she played softball. After graduation, she became a New Jersey State Trooper. While in the state police force, she entered the K-9 unit as a dog handler. She and her German shepherd Xena were well trained in drug and bomb detection. They even participated in canine blood drives.

  As a sergeant, Debra was the training coordinator for the K-9 units in the state’s Explosives Detection and Render Safe Task Force. This statewide partnership between bomb squads and K-9 handlers developed as a program of the state’s Domestic Security Preparedness Task Force in October 2001 in response to the September 11 attacks.

  Debra probably would have preferred running that day—she made very decent time in 5K races—but instead she was in Newark trying to help her brother cope with a mess of his own making.

  Greg, meanwhile, had shelled out a $7,500 retainer to hire lawyer Margaret Shalley for Dean. Shalley, a native New Yorker who earned her bachelor’s degree at SUNY’s Binghamton University was a graduate of Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, D.C. After thirteen years in public sector work, Shalley established her private practice in 1997. Dean was one in a string of disreputable clients that included a Newsday circulation manager accused of fraud for inflating distribution numbers, and a former senior spokesman in New York for the ousted Taliban government, charged with tax evasion for failing to report all of his income. Unlike others she encountered in her work, Dean was polite, charming and intelligent. He expressed a genuine concern for other people and demonstrated a deep-seated desire to help them.

  With his new attorney by his side, Dean turned himself in to the attorney general’s office in Manhattan at 7:40 on the morning of Tuesday, October 8, 2002. In short order, she would validate the faith Greg placed in her.

  RONDA LUSTMAN REPRESENTED THE STATE IN THE PROSECUtion of Dean Faiello. Over more than twenty years, her body of work in combating the unlicensed practice of medicine in New York helped define the legal boundaries of this crime. In addition, she worked on other medically-related matters, representing the state against pharmacies selling drugs without a doctor’s prescription, the practice of dentistry without a license, the theft of dental licensing exams and charges of fraud and grand larceny against a nurse for operating an illegal health plan.

  She was dedicated to protecting the public, and the prosecution of Dean Faiello fell into her area of specialization. Dean would face a seasoned professional in court—one who, if anything, was over-qualified to handle his E class felony.

  On his way from Central Booking to the courthouse, Dean spotted the New York Post investigator who played a role in his fall. Giving her his winning, smile he said, “Good morning, Miss MacIntosh.”

  When she asked him about Dr. Polis’ allegations, he said: “I have the greatest respect for Dr. Polis, but she was very upset because I left her practice. I was doing treatments. I was pretty successful. And I wanted to start my own business.” He didn’t mention that he told Dr. Polis that he was dying of AIDS.

  Dean was arraigned on October 8, 2002, in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan on three charges of the unlicensed practice of medicine, based on consultations with the undercover operatives for the attorney general’s office, Investigators Kathy Hearn, Ariana Miller and Tonya Holder. Eleven more unlicensed practices charges were brought against him for each time he treated Jill Vasquez and three more for every time Sandra Corinthian visited his office. Additionally, he faced three counts of assault in the second degree related to his treatment of Sandra. The assault charge at that lower level could signify minor pain or bruises. In this case, Dean’s removal of Sandra’s tattoo left scars that were more unsightly than the original inked art. These were all relatively minor felony charges, but still punishable by a prison term of one to four years each.

  The judge set bail at $5,000. He also set one firm condition for Dean’s release and continued freedom while awaiting trial. Dean could not continue to treat any patients—not with the legal use of laser for hair removal, not even with other laser use under the supervision of a licensed medical practitioner. The judge forbade him from working with lasers under any conditions.

  Before release, Dean had to raise the money for bail. Sam Faiello, who reappeared from out of their estrangement to observe Dean’s arraignment, asked Margaret Shalley, “Why don’t we just leave him there and see if a night in jail will straighten him up?” Greg was aghast at Sam’s solution. Looking back, he realized how little he knew about Dean’s history of irresponsibility. Greg stepped up again for Dean. The bondsman required cash, and Greg got a cash advance of $2,500 from his credit card and delivered it to the bail company’s office. The bond firm covered the other half of the bail money. Dean returned home late in the afternoon of that same day.

  The next day, Dean left Newark and headed over to his office near Gramercy Park. Greg thought he planned to pack up his belongings and close down his office. Dean, however, had other ideas. He had a client to treat.

  ON OCTOBER 15, DAN KELLEHER AND OTHER PERSONNEL FROM the Office of Professional Discipline with the state department of education sat down with Dr. Andrew Reyner to ask him about his relationship with Dean Faiello. Reyner said that he and Dean were friends. He was also sometimes a client of Dean’s, who’d visited him for laser hair removal.

  He never mentioned that their “friendship” included providing prescriptions and controlled substances to Dean. He denied receiving any money from Dean or Skin-Ovations, even though investigators had cancelled checks in their possession written to Reyner and signed by Dean. Dean’s website named Reyner medical director of the company, but Reyner insisted that the use of his name was unauthorized, and that he had ordered Dean to remove his name from the web page. Reyner denied ever writing any prescriptions for any of Dean’s clients. He said if they had any indication to the contrary, the only possible explanation was that Dean stole prescription pads from his office. Kelleher brought evidence of the drug scripts; Reyner claimed the signatures on them were forgeries.

  Kelleher asked him to provide an exemplar of his signature. Reyner complied, deliberately distorting his handwriting in an attempt to disguise it and prove that it was not the same as the signature on the prescriptions.

  The state department of education investigators doubted every word Reyner uttered. They were powerless, however, to take any action against a licensed physician. That authority was in the hands of the state department of health. They sent a report of their findings to that bureaucratic fortress for further investigation and possible disciplinary action.

  IN THE MEANTIME, DEAN NEEDED MONEY—HIS FIN
ANCIAL straits were desperate. That meant he needed to find work where he could earn a decent dollar for the time he spent on the job. It would be folly to think he could find employment doing electrolysis or laser under the supervision of another provider. There was only one answer in Dean’s mind: continuing to see his clients. This determination did not die easy. Greg and other friends, concerned with his risky behavior, badgered Dean until they thought they convinced him it was not worth the price he would pay if he was discovered defying the orders of the court.

  With no income, bankruptcy seemed inevitable. To forestall that possibility, Greg first contacted Dean’s father, asking him if he would help Dean financially. Although Sam had the money to give Dean a fresh start, he refused. He’d helped him out before and gotten burned, he said. Next Greg went to Debra. “I’m not going bankrupt to help my brother,” she told him. Still unaware that Dean’s financial interactions with his family included ripping off his mother’s estate, Greg was shocked by their coldness and unwillingness to help. He believed family members were supposed to help each other in times of crisis.

  Greg set up an appointment with an accountant, who met with the couple and devised a plan. Including the mortgage, Dean’s debts approached half a million dollars. There was only one way to cut the financial burden down to size, the accountant said—sell off Dean’s largest asset and the biggest source of indebtedness: the Newark house. With great reluctance, Dean agreed.

  On the condition that Dean would not violate the court order, Greg agreed to support his lover until he went to jail. He kept Dean’s mortgage current, paid utility bills and put food on the table. It was a crushing burden; Greg still had his own home to maintain and he’d used up much of his savings and incurred new debt helping Dean.

  Greg agreed to this financial arrangement with the understanding that he would have Dean’s power of attorney, should Dean be whisked off to jail. But Dean granted that authority to Debra. Wanting to remain in Dean’s good graces, Greg shrugged that off. Debra was family, after all. He knew her and got along well with her. He had no reason to distrust her when she assured him that he would be reimbursed for all of his expenditures on Dean’s behalf.