You think that southern Italy is where the Mafia runs supreme. You be wrong. In
Lebanon, corruption is in the DNA; it is so endemic that you find it across all social
strata, all economic sectors, and across all sectarian divides. Otherwise bitter religious
enemies will rally together wherever money is to be made illegally. The quintessential
mindset of the average Lebanese is to “outsmart” the system by any means necessary.
It’s more vital than breathing. Like a drug to which they are addicted, the Lebanese
can’t help it: They must go around the rules and the laws to prove the worth of their
otherwise pointless existence. And when the country runs aground because of
corruption, the Lebanese emigrate and take their corruption with them to their host
countries where they, again, try to outsmart the systems in place. The only way for a
Lebanese to prove him/herself in this world is to beat whatever system he/she
happens to settle in.
Now you may wonder what they do with all this money they earn, illegally or legally.
There any many Lebanese billionaires around the world, but they rarely used their
money to promote the welfare of their home country and its people, because they
know from their own selves that the Lebanese cannot be trusted not to steal it.
Whatever money the wealthy earn overseas is generally used for two objectives: Self-
promotion and a superficial tacky snotty lifestyle. If anything, and instead of building
research laboratories, state-of-the-art businesses, and science and technology hubs,
they build a church in their hometowns on top of the thousands of churches around.
Instead of restoring ancient historical churches, they build a huge and tacky cathedral,
supposedly for the local saint but, in reality, as an investment in “religious tourism”.
Money is always the objective. Despite the fake appearances, faith and worship are the
last of the objectives for the bigoted Lebanese. And furthermore, these useless
cathedrals are never completed because the money dissipates, sublimates, and
vanishes. You’ll see many of these concrete unfinished hulks lying around like
shipwrecks in the Lebanese countryside.
The whole country has collapsed under the weight of the rampant corruption: Power
outages because the government electric grid Mafia and the private generator Mafia are fighting-colluding over gasoil bribes. The banks have collapsed because the political
Mafia bosses and their cronies withdrew their billions of corrupt dollars from the
banks.
The Water Authority is in cahoots with the private water truck delivery Mafia: By
needlessly rationing the main water supply in a mountainous country with thousands
of rivers and streams rolling down the hills year-round, the water Mafia forces people
to resort to deliveries by water delivery truck owned by the Mafia itself, which charges
them triple the fees and splits the proceeds with the corrupt government authority.
Moreover, they spread false rumors that the water gushing out of the natural springs
around the hills almost everywhere in the country is contaminated, which makes the
credulous Lebanese buy bottled polluted-but-filtered water drawn from wells, with all
the devastating consequences on the environment; discarded plastic bottles are
everywhere.
Everything runs like this in Lebanon. Private schools and universities, essentially all
religious affiliates, are in a constant campaign to discredit the public school and
university systems: The corrupt politicians deny financing to the public sector, forcing
people to send their children to the private (religious) sector. The churches then turn
around and demand that government pays for tuitions and teacher salaries.
These poor conditions force people to emigrate. Having corruption in their
bloodstream, they navigate the more or less orderly and organized societies of their
host countries until they pick up the scent of vulnerabilities in their systems. Decent
organized societies rely on everyone’s sense of civic decency to make the system
function, but for the Lebanese decency is weakness and vulnerabilities become a
highway to a corruption paradise. Rules and laws? Hahaha…We know how to get
around them. We were trained in the best corruption university on earth.
Remember Michel Temer of Brazil?
Remember Dr. Larry Nassar?
A few examples of proud Lebanese exports to the world: Lemons, bananas, zaatar,
apples, canned chickpeas, and the top Lebanese export of all: ISO-certified corruption.
Lebanese news channels almost daily ooze praise and brag about the Lebanese
“genius” around the world, but they rarely mention cases that bring shame to
Lebanon. When you have a defect in the house, you hide it. You don’t talk about it. Just
like in Communist China. Just like the case of Maronite Catholic priest, Father Mansour Labaki, who for decades sexually abused the children he was “dedicated” to teaching
them music and singing Maronite religious hymns. After decades of investigations,
both France and the Vatican found him guilty, the former convicted him and the latter
defrocked him, only to find him hidden by the Maronite Church in Lebanon that
refuses to extradite him. In backward societies, you don’t hang your dirty laundry out.
One particularly egregious case of a corrupt Lebanese-American immigrant is Doctor
Farid Fata. In Lebanon, the Fata family generally hails from the town of Beit-Shabab in
the Matn. There are other Fatas around the world, originating from Italy for the most
part. But the Lebanese Fatas of Beit Shabab are reputed members of the Syrian
Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP), a renegade Fascist party switching from right-wing to
left-wing, but always dedicated Fascist, as circumstances warrant. The SSNP is
nowadays an ally of the Hezbollah Iranian militia, with whom it shares a deep hatred of
Jews. The SSNP believes that the Syrian “race” is superior to the Arab “race”, an
ideology cloned & copy-pasted off Hitler’s superior Aryan race over the southern
European races. In fact, the SSNP was founded by Antun Saadeh, an imbecile lover of
Adolf Hitler, as a clone of the Nazi Party, the same year in 1933. [For details on the
copy-pasted SSNP off the Nazi party, see this very interesting compare and contrast:
https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/06/dying-nazis-of-near-east.html]. The
SSNP, just like the German Nazis, believes that politics must be conducted with
extreme violence because it is a lot easier to “convince” people with guns and violence
than with arguments and reason. The SSNP has specialized in bombings and
assassinations of political opponents, including the assassination of Prime Minister
Riyad Solh (1951) and President Bashir Gemayel (1982).
Back to Doctor Farid Fata, and per WIKIPEDIA (excerpts):
Farid Tanios Fata (فريد طانيوس فتى, born 1965) is a Lebanese-born former
hematologist/oncologist and the mastermind of one of the largest health care frauds
in U.S. history. Fata was the owner of Michigan Hematology-Oncology (MHO). He was
arrested in 2013 on charges of prescribing chemotherapy to patients who were healthy
or whose condition did not warrant chemotherapy, then submitting $34 million in
fraudulent charges to Medicare and private health insurance companies over a period
of at least six years.
In 2014, Fata pleaded guilty in to charges of health care fraud, conspiring to pay and
receive kickbacks, and money laundering. On July 10, 2015, he was sentenced to 45
years in federal prison. Farid Fata was born in Lebanon in 1965 to a Melkite Catholic
family. After obtaining a medical degree there in 1992, he emigrated to the United States to begin his medical career. Fata served residencies and fellowships in several
medical centers in the US.
Fata struck out on his own in 2003, opening Michigan Hematology–Oncology (MHO) in
Rochester Hills, Michigan. Over the next decade, MHO grew to seven locations
throughout Metro Detroit—in Rochester Hills, Bloomfield Hills, and other locations in
Michigan. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in April 2009.
Fata specialized in treating blood cancer. He owned his own laboratory, pharmacy and
radiation treatment facility. At its peak, Fata’s practice was treating 17,000 patients at
its clinics. Fata acquired a sterling reputation as one of the best cancer specialists in the
Detroit area. He was known for his aggressive approach to treatment, giving higher
doses of chemotherapy drugs at a more frequent rate—a protocol he called “European
protocol”.
Fata’s wife, Samar, helped run the business side of his practice as chief executive
officer and chief financial officer of his companies. While authorities believe she was a
party to the fraud, she was able to move back to Lebanon after her husband’s arrest;
they have since divorced.
Fraud
Concerns about Fata cropped up as early as 2007, when Maggie Dorsey sued Fata for
malpractice. Dorsey had been diagnosed with cancer in 2004, and seven months of
chemotherapy had made it difficult for her to walk. She then learned that she did not
have cancer. The case was settled out of court in 2009. In 2010, veteran oncology
nurse Angela Swantek went to MHO for an interview, but was stunned to see practices
that her experience told her were “plain wrong”. Swantek believed that Fata was
pumping patients with drugs in hour-long chemotherapy sessions that should normally
last much shorter periods, thus allowing him to prescribe unnecessarily high volumes
of drugs. Swantek believed Fata was deliberately billing patients’ insurance companies
for more money, a classic fraud scenario. She complained to state authorities, but got
no response until 2011, when she got a form letter under the authority of Bureau of
Health Professions Acting Director Rae Ramsdell, of the State of Michigan’s
Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, saying that there was no evidence to
support an investigation into Fata. [Read the Wikipedia page for more examples of Dr.
Fata’s superior “European” fraudulent procedures]
Indictment
Fata was originally held on $170,000 bond. However, federal authorities found
evidence that he and his wife had assets of $9 million not yet seized, and feared that
the high liquidity of these assets could make him a high flight risk. They persuaded
federal judge Sean Cox to raise Fata’s bond to $9 million. He was confined to jail
pending trial.
Federal investigators amassed evidence that Fata had bullied or deceived 553 people
into getting chemotherapy treatments they did not need, causing the patients’
insurance companies and Medicare to pay $34 million in fraudulent and unnecessary
claims. They also found that Fata took kickbacks from two local hospices and poured
Medicare and private insurance proceeds into his own diagnostic testing facility, where
he ordered unnecessary tests. On the basis of these findings, Barbara McQuade, the
United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, obtained … a 23-count
indictment charging Fata with health care fraud, conspiracy to take and receive
kickbacks, money laundering, and unlawfully procuring naturalization. The last charge
was added because McQuade contended Fata had concealed the extent of his fraud
from immigration authorities when he applied for citizenship. If convicted on all
charges, Fata would face a maximum of 175 years in prison, plus the prospect of having
his naturalization revoked.
Guilty plea
Facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison and the prospect of
deportation to Lebanon if he were ever released, Fata pleaded guilty before federal
judge Paul Borman on September 20, 2014… to thirteen counts of health care fraud,
one count of conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks, and two counts of money
laundering. In return, the immigration charges were dropped. Nonetheless, McQuade
sought the maximum possible sentence of 175 years in prison. Her office denounced
Fata as “the most egregious fraudster in the history of this country” [I’m so proud
when a Lebanese achieves a Guinness Record like that] calling his crimes more
egregious than those of Bernie Madoff.
Sentencing
Fata’s sentencing hearing began on July 3, 2015. At the hearing, dozens of Fata’s
victims revealed how the unnecessary chemotherapy treatments had harmed them.
On July 10, 2015, Fata addressed the court for the first time. He said he was “horribly
ashamed” of his behavior, and admitted giving in to a “self-destructive” quest for power and wealth. Borman was unmoved and sentenced Fata to 45 years in prison,
saying that Fata had committed “huge, horrific” crimes. Farid Fata is serving his
sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Williamsburg in Salters, South Carolina.
His earliest possible release will be December 11, 2050.
-End of Wikipedia excerpts –
His contrition in court notwithstanding, Fata believed that once the dust had settled,
he could weasel his way out of prison away from the limelight. So, he chose to
continue lying and deceiving. Apparently, life in prison is not as bucolic as the one he
could have had in the hills of Lebanon had he been a decent man. He, in fact, dreamed
of buying a castle, no less, in Adma, Lebanon for the puny sum of $3 million. [See:
https://lebaneseexaminer.com/2014/09/20/agent-farid-fata-planned-buy-3m-castle-
adma-lebanon/]
In May 2018, Fata bluntly requested that his guilty plea be tossed based on the
assertion that he received poor legal advice that resulted in his guilty plea and that he
has always maintained his innocence, despite his admission of guilt during his
sentencing hearing. He stated in the filing, “My guilty pleas were not the result of my
actually being guilty. From day one to the present, I have steadfastly maintained my
innocence.” He sounds like Donald Trump.
Maybe in his lavish retirement prison he can play doctor with the other inmates. He
can inject them with syringes using the drugs that are readily available in American
prisons, in exchange of which the other inmates would inject him with their own God-
given penetrating devices and fluids.
HOW CAN THE LEBANESE NOT BE PROUD OF SUCH EXEMPLARY INDIVIDUALS WHO
MAKE LEBANON’S REPUTATION SHINE AROUND THE WORLD?
