LAS VEGAS, NV
Dipak Desai, a well-respected 63-year-old former Las Vegas doctor and endoscopy clinic owner was convicted and found guilty of 27 criminal charges against him. He was the doctor behind the one of the largest Hep C outbreaks in the US and is charged with second degree murder. During the trial, the jury heard how patients would be treated with re-used needles and fecal matter would spray on the walls of treatment rooms as Desai
tried to perform sendoscopies as quickly as possible to maximize profits. Nurse-anesthetist Ronald Lakeman, a former employee at Dipak Desai’s Endoscopy Clinic of Southern Nevada, was found guilty of 16 of 27 charges against him but was spared a murder conviction stemming from the death of 77-year-old Rodolfo Meana in April 2012. Desai, a former Nevada state medical board member, surrendered his medical license, declared bankruptcy and turned over his business affairs to family members and lawyers in recent years. His lawyers maintained that he was unfit for trial because of the effects of several strokes in recent years. Desai, 63, and Lakeman, 66, face the possibility of life in prison for their multiple felony convictions. Jurors heard more than 70 witnesses during seven weeks of testimony about a case that shocked the community when the outbreak became public in February 2008. Health officials issued advisories that led 63,000 clinic patients to get tested for potentially fatal blood-borne diseases, including hepatitis and HIV. Investigators blamed unsafe injection practices and traced the infections of nine people to Desai clinics, although local and federal health investigators said they thought the hepatitis C infections of another 105 patients might have been related to similar practices. The charges in Clark County District Court resulted from the infection of seven patients and bills paid by their insurers. Health investigators testified that they believed vials became contaminated with hepatitis C virus from two different ‘source’ patients on two dates in 2007, and that tainted anesthetic was injected into subsequent patients on those dates. The state criminal case is separate from a case pending against Desai and a former clinic business manager, Tonya Rushing, in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas. Desai and Rushing have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and health care fraud charges alleging they schemed to inflate anesthesia times and overbill health insurance companies. Trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 20.