Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Famous Fraud Doctor - The Dr. Paolo story

Episode Date: May 12, 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.

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Hello! Hello! Hello! We know what we're made of, Toyota Trucks. 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. Paulo. And Dr. Paulo is a guy who's so brilliant, he invented a life-saving surgery that gives people with broken wind pipes 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. Paulo's nice, he treats her good, he's successful, and he's he's respected in the medical community. And together, they seem really happy. But Dr. Paulo 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. Paulo 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. Paulo 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 Nicholas Sarkozy is also going to be there. The Beckhams, Elton John, Russell Crow, 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. Paulo tells Benita that the Pope has offered to marry them himself. In his Papal Palo, in Italy. And Dr. Paulo 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 going to 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. Paulo. Apparently, some of his colleagues in the medical community are accusing him of scientific misconduct, saying that he's exaggerating the success of these life-saving windpipe surgeries

he's so well known for. And so she goes to him and she's like, what's all this about? And he tries to play it off. Like, oh, none of that is true. They're just haters. Or whatever, he says. So anyway, some more time passes and their wedding date is getting closer. Now, after this wedding, Benita is supposed to move to Barcelona where Dr. Paulo has a house,

and she's going to live there with him, and it's going to be wonderful. And so she gets her passport already. She quits her job for this move. She is now ready for this new life with her dream man in Spain. Until. So one day, she's chilling at a spa looking at her phone, and she gets an email from someone she knows. And this person sent her a link to an article that shows that the Pope is not going to be in Italy around the time of her wedding. He's scheduled to be in South America, so he can't possibly marry them.

And so she calls Dr. Paulo and she's like yelling at him like, what the fuck is going on? You lying to me? And Dr. Paulo makes up some bullshit excuses and he says, I'll fly to Rome and I'll fix this myself. But Benita, she's not stupid. She knows something weird is going on. And so she uses her TV documentary producer skills and she starts investigating. She calls the castle that Dr. Paulo said the wedding guests are supposed to stay at. And the people at the castle say they've never heard of him.

Not only that, other places he claimed he booked for the wedding also never heard of him. So immediately, Benita does the smart thing and she postpones the wedding until she can figure out what the hell is going on. And so like 300 guests who all bought plane tickets to Italy now have to ask for a refund. Well, that sucks. But anyway, she looks into all of this and she gets someone who's affiliated with the Clintons to confirm that they've never heard of Dr. Paulo either. Then she somehow gets the Vatican to verify that the Pope also doesn't know Dr. Paulo. So this dude was just like lying, saying he knows all these people and has all these famous

friends when like, no, he doesn't at all. And so Benita's like, oh hell no, and she travels to Barcelona to his house to surprise, confront him. And she gets there and she learns that he's living there in Barcelona with another

woman. Not his wife that he was supposed to be getting a divorce from, but a third woman that he apparently has a serious relationship with. Okay, so we know that he's a liar, but who really is this Dr. Well, he really is a world-renowned surgeon, and he really did invent a breakthrough windpipe surgery.

And for him, this is like a really big deal because it makes him very well known in the medical community. And then he gets recruited for a job at a respected medical research university in Sweden. And because the science behind this surgery is brand new, Dr. Paulo is supposed to do a lot of preparation and tests to make sure it's not too risky. However, he doesn't do all that. No, no, no, he dives right into operating on people. And these surgeries, they seem to be successful.

And the patients go through it, and they feel better, and they recover. However, then, a little later, some of them start dying from complications from his surgeries. And some of them who don't die, they have strokes, and they start going blind, and one person needed almost 200 additional surgeries to try and fix the damage from his work. Like all kinds of horrible stuff. Because his breakthrough windpipe surgery wasn't breakthrough at all. It was total bullshit. 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. knows the Pope and all this other nonsense. Now, eventually, over time, as Dr. Paulo 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. Paulo 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 bullshir. 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. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task. Unless you have a problem. partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason

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