Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story
Mon, 12 May 2025
Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, once celebrated as a pioneer in regenerative medicine for his work on synthetic windpipe transplants, became embroiled in a major medical scandal after it was revealed that his experimental surgeries lacked sufficient scientific backing and resulted in the deaths of multiple patients. Employed by Sweden's prestigious Karolinska Institute, Macchiarini performed unproven procedures on at least 20 patients across several countries, with many suffering severe complications or dying as a result. Investigations uncovered that he had falsified parts of his résumé and misrepresented the success of his surgeries.
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Paolo and why was he famous?
So this famous doctor is a fraud. Let me explain. Now the story starts with this woman, Benita. And Benita is a TV producer living in New York City. And one day in 2013, she's assigned to work on a documentary story about this amazing rock star of a surgeon, this guy, Dr. Paolo.
And Dr. Paolo is a guy who's so brilliant, he invented a life-saving surgery that gives people with broken windpipes the chance to breathe again. And so he's like famous in the medical world now. So Benita meets this guy to do this story on him and interview him and she's like, oh snap, he kinda fine. And then boom, they start dating. And this is going really well for her.
Dr. Paolo's nice, he treats her good, he's successful, and he's respected in the medical community. And together they seem really happy. But Dr. Paolo is gone all the time for work. He apparently has to fly all over the world to do these breakthrough surgeries. But you know, that's okay. He's always sending Benita little love messages and stuff.
I just wanted to send you a few loving good morning words and a lot of kisses.
And after several months of dating, pow, he proposes. So now these two are officially getting married. But there's a small problem. Dr. Paolo is already married to another woman. I mean, they're not together anymore, but his divorce isn't quite finalized yet. But whatever, they'll figure it out. So anyway, they start planning this wedding, and it's going to be a big destination wedding in Italy.
Not only that, but Dr. Paolo is like famous in the medical world, so he knows a lot of people. He says he's friends with the Clintons, so he's going to invite them to the wedding. He's friends with the Obamas, so they're invited. He knows Vladimir Putin, so he's invited. French leader Nicolas Sarkozy is also going to be there. The Beckhams, Elton John, Russell Crowe, they're all going to be there.
Not only that, John Legend is going to be playing the ceremony. And if that isn't crazy enough, bro is also friends with... the Pope. And so Dr. Paolo tells Benita that the Pope has offered to marry them himself in his papal palace in Italy. And Dr. Paolo even secures a castle for all their guests to stay in.
Isn't it incredible that next week we are to visit a place where we will marry?
And so this is gonna be like an amazing wedding. And so fast forward a little bit to 2014 and they haven't had their wedding yet, but they're a few months away from it and things are still going well. But then it all starts crashing down because one day she's reading the New York Times and boom, she sees a story about Dr. Paolo.
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Chapter 2: What was Benita's relationship with Dr. Paolo like?
And so it's during this time that he meets Benita, who's trying to interview him for a TV documentary she's producing, and he's successful and he's moderately famous in his community, but for whatever sociopathic reason, he starts lying to her.
Not only about being single, but he starts saying he's friends with the Obamas and with Elton John and that he personally knows the Pope and all this other nonsense. Now, eventually, over time, as Dr. Paolo gets more and more well-known, other doctors and surgeons and medical professors, they look into his work and they start declaring it to be junk science and dangerous.
And they start calling him out, calling him a fraud, and calling out the medical research university in Sweden that employs him. Even Benita, after she discovers he's a liar, she eventually starts writing to the Medical Research University in Sweden, telling them that Dr. Paolo is in fact a fraud. And so the Medical Research University in Sweden has to do an investigation.
And they look into him several times, actually. And they eventually discover that, yeah, he's a bulls***. He had lied on his resume. And he had said that his surgeries were way more successful than they actually were. And a lot of people he operated on got hurt because of it. And so eventually the medical research university in Sweden fires him for scientific misconduct.
And in 2016, Swedish police open a criminal investigation into him. And ultimately in 2023, he's found guilty of gross assault against his patients. Imagine your surgery is so bad that you're charged with committing assault. Anyway, this lion ass dude, he gets sentenced to two years, six months in prison.
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