Under the Knife: A Beautiful Woman, a Phony Doctor, and a Shocking Homicide (14 page)

“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.”

DEBRA FAIELLO READ ABOUT HER BROTHER’S LATEST MISAD
ventures 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 PROSECU
tion 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 FINANCIAL
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.

Greg had already invested so much in the Newark home; it seemed a better choice to give more with the possibility of recouping his expenditures than to just walk away from the money pit. Although Greg didn’t think there was a place for him in Dean’s future, he still loved the man. His goal was to liquidate Dean’s assets, including the house, and create a nest egg that Dean could use to start his life over again when he left prison. He could not reach that goal unless the house sold for a decent price. Making that happen became a primary mission in Greg’s life.

Dean may have accepted the reality of his situation, but that did not mean he could deal with it. He slid into a deep depression. He spent day and night in bed, with only occasional forays into the real world. Working out at the
gym no longer held any attraction for him and the pounds piled on his previously svelte frame.

Dean no longer bothered to pull his mail out of the box. Greg assumed that responsibility and was shocked to discover the mountain of unpaid bills. It would be a miracle if they could hold their debtors at bay long enough to sell the house.

To make matters even worse, the house at 212 Elwood was not fit to go on sale. It needed repairs and a little polish to get a decent price. Greg despaired about the situation, but pulled money out of his pocket to make the home marketable. Dean did nothing but wallow in a slough of despondence and self-pity.

He pulled himself together enough to attend a neighborhood Halloween party, where he announced his need to sell the house and to spruce it up before putting it on the market. A neighbor introduced Dean to Dr. David Goldschmitt, director of the Emergency Services Department at NYU’s Downtown Hospital, stating that Dean was a doctor. Dean did not contradict her.

The two men talked about how odd it was that they’d never met before. Their houses were just a block apart on opposite sides of the street. Dean arrived in the neighborhood nearly seventeen years earlier. David lived there for a decade longer than that.

The main topic of their conversation was the challenges presented by their two Victorian houses. David had finished his exterior work and planned to renovate the interior and turn his home into a showcase. Dean sought David’s advice on the priorities for preparing his home for sale.