Under the Knife: A Beautiful Woman, a Phony Doctor, and a Shocking Homicide (9 page)

He did allow Muriel to practice using the laser on his lower back, but that was it. The rest of the time, Muriel took care of the electrology work that Dean did not want to do. When Muriel brought in her customers for laser hair removal, Dean would not instruct her as they had agreed. He simply did the work himself—and kept all the money, too. To Muriel, it seemed as if he were robbing her of clients and cheating her out of revenue.

Behind her back, Dean told Muriel’s clients, “You do not want Muriel doing this. She is not ready yet.” To Muriel’s face, he said, “Well, I can’t help it. Your clients just don’t want to go to you anymore.”

She knew Dean presented an excellent bedside manner. He was calm, patient, attractive and unpretentious; it did not surprise her that her clients found him likeable. Still, she and Dean had an agreement and Dean was not fulfilling his part of the bargain.

She listened to his lame excuses for a few weeks, then confronted him. “I don’t want to believe that what you are doing is unethical. I want to assume there is a misunderstanding. There must be a reason you are not teaching me.”

Dean, however, would not respond. He would not engage in any discussion or conversation about the issues between them. He just shut her out.

Muriel gave up, packed up her equipment and terminated the relationship. She got her laser education elsewhere.

WITH OR WITHOUT DR. KEAVY’S KNOWLEDGE, DEAN EXPANDED
his services to include tattoo removal, benign pigmented lesion removal, vascular lesion removal and laser skin resurfacing, a procedure that destroys the top layer of the epidermis, allowing fresh, new skin to take its place.

Since New York was one of the few states that did not require a medical license to operate a laser, performing these procedures and giving lidocaine injections did not technically break the law—especially given the supposed oversight of Dr. Keavy. But Dean pushed closer and closer to the edge.

He claimed that he was certified in laser skin treatments, and he did in fact have certificates for every laser class he attended. But when he advertised that he was a member of the American Society for Laser Medicine &
Surgery, he crossed a line. The organization did not require its members to be physicians, but he alluded to his affiliation with it in a manner that made it sound like a claim of medical school education.

BY 1997, DEAN BEGAN PASSING HIMSELF OFF AS A DERMATOLO
gist. His ruse convinced enough people that when Linda Burke prepared to move from San Francisco to New York, her dermatologist on the West Coast recommended Dr. Dean Faiello.

The skies were gray on the winter morning that Linda approached Dean’s office building for the first time to finish the hair removal she started in California. Vicious cold blanketed the city. She thought it quite odd that in the middle of the winter in Manhattan, her new doctor sported a golden tan. All the other dermatologists she knew tended to look pasty every month of the year, avoiding over-exposure to the rays that induced such a glow.

The tan, though, did add to Dean’s exceptional good looks, as did the genetic endowment of glorious dark eyelashes, the man-made, tailored arch of his eyebrows and the symmetry of his tight, fresh beard. Dean gave off an air that said he was conscious of the perfection of his looks—much like the smug smirk on the face of a haughty cat after an intense session of meticulous grooming.

Dean, in a soft voice, explained the wonders of his state-of-the-art laser hair-removal machine. He told her that he used it on himself on a regular basis.
Like that isn’t obvious
, she thought.

Linda laid back on the table for her treatment. She remained prone, trying to relax. “I’m going to apply the specialty healing lotion now,” Dean told her.

Linda opened her eyes and saw Dean squeezing a thick liquid into his gloved hand. The label on the bottle
read: “Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion.” Bemused, she shut her eyes and felt the soothing coolness on her skin.

She assumed, based on her physician’s referral, that Dean was a medical doctor. He never told her he was. She never thought to ask.

And she never thought about Dean Faiello again in the seven years that followed.

DURING LINDA BURKE’S TREATMENT SESSION, DEAN DID
nothing illegal, immoral or unethical. But he was unquestionably committing illegal acts when he wrote prescriptions for Stadol and signed Dr. Laurie Polis’ name. The drug, prescribed for migraine headaches, was hard to find on the streets, and Dean used as much as a bottle a day to feed his habit. When he started using Stadol, the bottles were $100 apiece; but as time went on, the price rose to $250 a pop, making it a rather costly addiction. Often, he used his American Express card to pay for his Stadol, creating a paper trail that investigators would eventually follow with ease.

When his clients got prescriptions for Stadol from their doctors, to relax them during laser procedures, Dean often pocketed the slightly used bottles while the customer was too dazed to notice. If one of them called about it after his head cleared, he found it easy to believe Dean’s denial, and to suspect that he had lost it someplace else.

AFTER DEAN MOVED INTO HIS UPPER EAST SIDE OFFICE, DR.
Polis was flipping through
New York
magazine. An ad for the opening of a new laser clinic and multi-specialty medical center caught her eye. The marketing angle replicated the one she used for her own business.

She looked closer, her curiosity transforming into surprise, then sinking in a queasy recognition of betrayal. The director and laserist listed in the ad for this new center
was none other than Dean Faiello. He’d manipulated her sympathy with a tale of fatal illness and, under a cloak of deception, used her expertise to further his own business objectives.

She knew New York state did not require a medical license to operate a laser—not for hair removal. But Dean offered more. He described himself as a medical practitioner well versed in laser technology and willing to remove “ugly brown spots” and other lesions.

Dr. Polis was alarmed.
How could Dean know the difference between harmless benign solar lentigines and the deadly lentigo maligna melanomas?
She knew his lack of medical training put his clients at risk. From Dr. Polis’ viewpoint, it was clear that Dean was practicing medicine without a license.

She went to her computer and logged on to the Internet, pulling up the website for Dean’s business, SkinOvations. Once again, she faced a marketing message that mimicked her own. Now she knew why Dean was so eager and active in their marketing meetings.

The website claimed that SkinOvations had a number of medical practitioners on staff. Dr. Polis called the office number. From the woman at the front desk, she learned that the whole business consisted of the receptionist, Dean Faiello and a single treatment room with a laser machine.

Dr. Polis believed she had an ethical responsibility to take action when she observed someone posing a medical risk to public safety. Someone had to protect Dean’s clients. She called the state department of education and got nowhere. She called the state health department, who told her that they could not take action until they had a consumer complaint about a violation of public health regulations.

She found no help at the police department, either. “
What crime is he committing if it’s not illegal for him to run a laser?” they asked.

When she called the state attorney general’s office, they referred her to District Attorney Robert Morganthau. His office referred her in turn to the assistant district attorney’s office, but did not name any particular individual as a contact. She left repeated messages, but no one ever returned her calls.

She contacted the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, but they insisted it was not a drug problem and not in their jurisdiction. The Better Business Bureau claimed they could do nothing about his false advertising. The state Department of Consumer Affairs said it was a matter for the legal authorities. Unfortunately, they were unable to tell her
which
legal authority would be most likely to take action.

After exhausting every possible government organization that popped into her head—she made fifty-four phone calls before she lost count—Dr. Polis called
New York
magazine to complain. “We take money for advertising, label it as advertising, but we do not assume any responsibility for the content.”

Dr. Polis brought up the issue at several dermatology meetings. The other physicians shared her concerns, but did not know who she could contact to stop Dean Faiello. One physician expressed interest in helping her in her quest—the director of the Laser & Skin Surgery Center of New York, Dr. Roy Geronemus.

He’d heard Dean Faiello’s name before. Patients arrived in his office with scarring and permanent changes in skin pigmentation over the treated areas. Some received treatments in spas from uncertified practitioners. Some visited physicians who were not dermatologists or plastic surgeons—just doctors who got a laser, attended a crash weekend course and expanded their practice in pursuit of
a quick buck. In one case, a model’s career was cut short after an oral surgeon used a laser to remove a lesion on her face and left a large scar on her lip.

With increasing frequency, these scarred patients mentioned the name of Dr. Dean Faiello. The damage-causing treatments they received at his hands included hair removal, but also the removal of lesions and tattoos. Dr. Geronemus decided to check out Dr. Faiello and discovered that he did not possess a license to practice medicine in the state of New York.

Now he, too, was concerned about this fake doctor. “You must have training in the presenting problem as well as in the device being used,” he said. “You have to have sufficient knowledge and education to exercise clinical judgment, because lasers interact with the skin in different ways, depending on a patient’s age, skin type and skin color.

“Entrepreneurial types like Dean Faiello believe they can operate this machinery based on technical knowledge but without medical training. As a result, they’re flying under the radar and hurting people.”

Dr. Geronemus filed a complaint about Dean’s unlicensed practice of medicine with the Office of Professional Discipline at the state department of education. Then he waited for them to do the right thing.

IN EARLY
1998,
AFTER THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEAN
and Jason fell apart, Dean partied one night at G, a Chelsea bar he’d frequented for years. It was the beginning of his relationship with event planner Greg Bach.

Greg’s father was a cowboy and a rancher who went back to school and earned a degree in Chemical Engineering. He worked for an American-owned company that had transferred him, his wife and two children from the hot, nearly tropical environment of San Antonio, Texas, to Alberta, Canada. Two additional children were born to the Bach family before Greg came along on July 5, 1960. He grew up with two brothers and two sisters in Montreal.

At the age of four, he started training for competitive swimming, spending two to six hours in the water every day. At 14, he swam in his first international competition. When he turned 16, he made the national team. His events were the 100-meter and 200-meter breast stroke. He competed in the Pan American Games, Commonwealth Games and in the World Championships for four years as an internationally ranked swimmer.

While still competing, Greg moved to New York City—where he’d fantasized about living for most of his life. But he found the price tag for living in the city of his dreams too steep for a swimmer.

The discounted flights from New York to London were enticing, and the 20-year-old eventually decided to pack his bags and move to England. He found a job modeling in Europe. He remained on that side of the Atlantic for four years. The magical pull of New York tugged at his heart strings the whole time he was gone.

In 1984, he returned to Manhattan to study art and design. He attended the National Academy of Design and the School of Visual Arts. As he studied, he experimented with sculpture and discovered his medium—human figurative sculpting in sand. He rendered oversized figures on the beaches of Fire Island and East Hampton, photographing their demise as the tide rolled in and wiped them away. The end result was a poetic and allegoric series of shots depicting gradual destruction. He had no way of knowing that his art foreshadowed his life. As the sand returned to the sea, he couldn’t know that one day he would watch a different force wipe away the life of a person dear to him—Dean Faiello.

Greg’s sand-sculpting project brought him in contact with a major event designer who hired him as a freelancer to create huge bird sculptures out of moss, palms and orchids for an event at The Metropolitan Opera House. He hired Greg again to paint a backdrop for a boy’s bar mitzvah celebration. That led to a full-time position in the company’s floral department.

Greg enjoyed event work and saw the need for a business that could provide the same service on a smaller scale for more modest events. He stepped out on his own to fill that need. Through the New York City Business Solutions Center he found mentoring support and seminars that provided the information he needed to face critical business issues and increase his odds of success. Small businesses often come to an end because their owners are unaware of business taxes and other regulatory issues, or
through a lack of proper planning. Greg availed himself of all the resources he could find to increase his likelihood of success.