Mike O'Brien
Daily News Staff Writer He spent five years on the run ... but the game is now up for Mark Weinberger, America's most wanted doctor.
Facing trial on 22 counts of healthcare fraud, Weinberger was arrested earler this month after he was found living in a tent 6,000ft up on the southern slopes of Mont Blanc in Italy.
Two officers of the paramilitary Carabinieri, accompanied by a mountain guide, found the 46-year-old ear, nose and throat specialist surviving in sub-zero temperatures on dried and tinned food and snow he melted on a portable stove.
The fugitive surgeon was sought by the FBI. He featured more than once on the Fox television show America's Most Wanted, and was supposedly sighted as far away as China. U.S. authorities are now thought to be applying for his extradition, London's Guardian.co.uk reports.
Weinberger, who disappeared on September 21, 2004, walking out on his wife Michelle and their 79ft powerboat that was docked in a marina on the Greek island of Mykonos.
"I put my hand on his side of the bed, and I remember feeling it empty," she later told the US television channel NBC. Weinberger leapt from bed in alarm to find that her husband had vanished, taking with him his passport and money he had stashed secretly on board.
Brought up in a wealthy New York suburb, Weinberger studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the UCLA medical school. He worked with one of Chicago's most renowned plastic surgeons before opening his own practice, the Weinberger Sinus Clinic, in Merrillville, Indiana.
He met future wife Michelle, 12 years his junior, in 2000 and proposed eight months later, eventually marrying in both the U.S. and Italy.
According to Guardian.co.uk, Michelle said she believed her husband was earning $200,000 a week, performing between seven and 15 operations.
But his life of luxury started falling apart in October 2002 when a lawyer acting for the estate of a woman who had died of throat cancer filed a complaint with the Indiana department of insurance. Weinberger, it was claimed, failed to diagnose her cancer and instead carried out an unnecessary operation on her sinuses that was paid for by her insurance company.
Dozens of the doctor's former patients came forward, alleging that they too had had surgery they suspected was unnecessary, the lawyer said. A similar complaint was filed by a second attorney acting for 25 former patients.
As the suits came flying in from all directions, Weinberger told his wife he was throwing a very special 30th birthday party for her. He whisked her, her mother and three friends off to the Greek islands and bought her two expensive diamonds. Then he disappeared.
The wife subsequently discovered the unpaid berthing fees on Mykonos came to $40,000. The boat was seized by the Greek authorities. Weinberger's practice owed $5.7m and was eventually auctioned to meet his debts.
But the creepiest discovery was that the doctor had a room at his clinic which his employees dubbed "the scary room". It was crammed with survival gear which had been shipped to Europe before he left.
Weinberger reportedly tried unsuccessfully to kill himself after his arrest by slashing his throat. He is now recovering from the injuries.
The question that now remains is when will be returned to American soil to finally face justice.
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