Blast From the Past: Max, Judy, Voodoo, and Abortion Fraud

IMPORTANT: Current status unknown: Dr. Judith Comeau-Samuel has changed her name to Dr. Judith Prophete and is listed on many web sites as practicing obstetrics and gynecology, family practice, and/or addictions treatment in Philadelphia and occasionally in New Jersey. The Pennsylvania Department of State web site lists her as having an active license to practice medicine, but also on one of its pages lists her address as the State Correctional Institution at Muncy, PA. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections shows no inmate by that name. For public safety I think it's important that we verify where this woman is and what she is doing.

Voodoo Made Me Do It

The recent arrest of Dr. Narash Patel for selling abortions to women who weren't actually pregnant isn't an isolated incident. Similar frauds, as uncovered by the Chicago Sun-Times, have been found across the country. But the oddest case by far must be a husband and wife team of New York abortionists.

When called before the medical board in 1986, Dr. Judith Comeau-Samuel admitted to practices endangering the health of patients at her abortion clinics, but claimed that she had only done so because she was dominated by her husband and manipulated by him via voodoo.

The report indicated that Comeau-Samuel and her husband would charge $75 for a pregnancy test. They would then tell the patient she was pregnant, then offer to apply the $75 pregnancy test fee toward the cost of an abortion. Authorities estimated that 25% of the abortions performed at Comeau-Samuel's facilities were done on non-pregnant women. The number of victims in 1985 was estimated at 2,400.

The whole scheme got exposed after a woman who had undergone a sterilization procedure was told that she was pregnant at one of the Comeau-Samuel facilities. The husband-and-wife team were arrested after a sting by two non-pregnant policewomen.

What was particularly alarming, in addition to the unnecessary emotional distress and risks of the procedures themselves, is that these "abortions" were done under general anesthesia in a substandard facility, placing these women at severe risk of debilitating or even lethal anesthesia complications.

Medical board documents indicate that the Medical Board, Commissioner of Health, Regents Review Committee, and Board of Regents all found Comeau-Samuel guilty of:

• 65 counts of "practicing the profession with gross negligence"
• 29 counts of "Permitting, aiding, or abetting an unlicensed person to perform activities requiring a license"
• 90 counts of "Practicing the profession fraudulently"
• 65 counts of "Practicing the profession with gross incompetence"
• 139 counts of "Unprofessional conduct" 

The charges related to the following violations at Comeau-Samuel's two abortion clinics:

• performing abortions on non-pregnant women
• failure to take medical history or perform examinations
• administering general anesthesia without ascertaining if patients had eaten
• administering general anesthesia without proper resuscitative equipment
• failing to monitor vital signs during general anesthesia
• failure to provide post-anesthesia evaluations
• failure to give adequate aftercare instructions
• failure to obtain informed consent
• failure to supervise recovery
• failure to test for Rh factor hence jeopardizing health and lives of future babies of Rh-negative patients
• allowing her husband Maxen Samuel to practice without a license
• falsely advertising that medical services would be performed by board-certified specialist when they were performed by non-certified Comeau-Samuel and non-licensed Maxen Samuel
• having pregnancy tests performed by untrained individual if they were performed at all

Comeau-Samuel was fined $19,500, and her license was revoked. Her husband was jailed for performing abortions on non-pregnant women and for practicing medicine without a license. Samuel was also disciplined for having food, coffee, and wine available to patients in the waiting room then not warning them of the danger of eating prior to general anesthesia.

Samuel's attorney said that Samuel admitted to operating without a license, but insisted that he had to do so because he needed the money. The judge reviewing the case ordered the couple to surrender their passports to prevent flight to their native Haiti.

 For more on the Voodoo Abortionists, see:

• Holtzman v. Samuel 130 Misc.2d 976 (1985)

                                                                     

 

 

 

 

Deaths After Phony Abortions? A Call For Information

Naresh Patel

Secular Pro-Life raises in interesting question in the wake of the arrest of abortionist Naresh Patel for selling abortions to women who weren't actually pregnant: "Have any women been injured or killed by complications from fake abortions?"

I know of two verified deaths of women who had been sold abortions when they hadn't actually been pregnant.

"Sandra" committed suicide in 1971 after an abortion sold to her when she hadn't been pregnant. Before ending her life she had expressed remorse about having "killed her baby."

In 1989, Synthia Dennard bled to death from a combination abortion/tubal ligation sold to her when she hadn't actually been pregnant.

There is a third possibility that I have been trying to verify. In 1979, Deloris Smith had been injured during an abortion about four months before her 15th birthday and died shortly after her birthday. I recall seeing a news clipping that said her mother was suing and claiming that the pregnancy test done at the National Abortion Federation clinic prior to the abortion had actually come up negative. If anybody has access to Atlanta news archives, or can do a docket search for the mother's lawsuit, please follow through and let us all know what you find.

Rapey Abortionist Arrested for Fraud

Abortion doctor
Naresh Patel

KATV Arkansas is reporting about the recent arrest of abortion doctor Naresh Patel for lying to patients by telling them they're pregnant when they're not then charging them $620 for abortion drugs. This is a triple-whammy to the patients, who lose their money, needlessly take drugs that can cause fatal infections, and go through the emotional trauma of believing that they have aborted their babies.

Patel has a long history, though, of willingness to endanger and traumatize patients. It's staggering that, like Kermit Gosnell in Pennsylvania, he was free to practice after all the deplorable things he'd done.

Patient allegations. Click to enlarge.

In 1993, three of Patel's patients came forward reporting that he had raped them. Patient #1 was groggy, recovering from her abortion, when Patel put his penis in her mouth. Patient #2 was groggy from sedation for her abortion when Patel raped her orally, vaginally, and rectally. Patient #3 reported that he had raped her vaginally when she was on the procedure table. Somehow, in spite of ample evidence, including taped phone conversations in which Patel admitted to putting his penis in Patient #1's mouth, he was acquitted.

In 1995, a patient sued him for putting a 6 cm. tear in her cervix and being unable to treat her for this injury because he had no hospital admitting privileges. Another patient sued him in 1994 after he had mangled her uterus and refused to call an ambulance until her family members demanded that he do so; she required an immediate hysterectomy to save her life. Another patient sued in 1994 when she began bleeding and expelling fetal parts after he'd discharged her from his clinic.

News clipping about fetus dumping.
Click to enlarge.

In 1992 he admitted to burning a bag of 60 aborted fetuses in an open field.

In 1990 he was reprimanded for disemboweling a 15-year-old abortion patient. His medical assistant saw him "pull out some tissue and take it in his hands." She then testified that Patel said, "That's her small intestine" before stuffing it back inside. The teen was rushed to a hospital, where surgeons found a hole in her uterus and a fetus floating in blood in her abdomen. She needed to have her fallopian tubes, ovaries, and portion of her colon removed due to injuries.

Redacted patient record recovered
from dumpster. Click to enlarge.

In 2013 Patel also disposed of confidential patient information in a dumpster, including patient consent forms,  financial information, and abortion documentation. He also dumped job applications that had personal information about the applicants. As if that's not enough, he also disposed of  biohazardous materials in the dumpster.


Patel's appalling background didn't stop the University of Oklahoma from entering in an agreement with him in 2013 to be part of a nursing training program.

Sections of agreement between
Patel and U of OK.
Click to enlarge.

If forced to acknowledge this situation at all, the abortion lobby will dismiss Patel as a fluke, just as they dismissed Kermit Gosnell and Robert Alexander and Abu Hayat and Steve Brigham and Hillview Women's Surgical Center and scores of others as flukes. It's not just abortion doctors and abortion facilities, after all, that commit quackery and endanger and kill patients. While that is true, those other doctors don't have a dedicated group of lobbying organizations that enables their quackery under the guise of ensuring access to safe medical care to women. Other doctors don't have political organizations that claim to have their patients' well-being as their number one priority but who in fact put forth lobbying and public-relations campaigns asserting that efforts to close down these quacks will  hurt patients.

I'm not asking prochoice groups and citizens to convert to a prolife stand and join us in attempting to abolish abortion. I'm asking them to put women's safety first by at least checking up on practitioners before referring women to them and to stop derailing efforts to put quacks like Patel out of business.

Mystery in Illinois

Why is there a sudden, huge surge in the number of Medicaid-funded abortions justified on grounds of rape -- in Illinois?

According to a document by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, the spike, entirely due to increased numbers in Illinois alone, rose from 20 in FY2005 to 84 in FY2006 and 363 in FY2007. Other states show no comparable increases.

I'm betting it all gets tracked back to a single abortionist or referral organization, that figured nobody'd ever question it if women who wanted free abortions just claimed rape to get the government to pony up the dough to abort pregnancies conceived in consensual relationships. Any other guesses? We'll see who's right at the end of the investigation.

Solving the mystery

People had been searching for "abortionist arrested" and "Sheikh arrested". Now Life News solves the mystery for me: Kentucky Abortion Practitioner Jailed for Alleged Medicaid Fraud (with mugshot goodness)

Hamid Hussain Sheikh is being held on $100,000 bond. He's been charged with billing the state for "ultrasounds" that were actually elective abortions. He faces up to 20 years in prison. He was also charged with double-billing -- charging the patients for abortions, then billing the state.

After they charged him with Medicaid fraud, investigators search his offices in Lexington and found the abortion facility as having "deplorable sanitary conditions." Officials will forward their findings to the Board of Medical Licensure for potential actions.

“The investigation continues,” Attorney General Greg Stumbo said in a statement LifeNews.com received. “Additional charges are possible in view of the deplorable sanitary conditions found in Sheikh’s office.”

For more, see the indictment, or this press release from the Kentucky Attorney General:

.... According to the indictment, Sheikh has engaged in the scheme continuously since 2004.

[Attorney General] Stumbo credited his new program called the Fraud Investigation Support Team (FIST) with discovering the illegal abortion activities. FIST is composed of a Medicaid fraud work group trained in data claims and computer forensics to efficiently and effectively review allegations of fraud.

....

The investigation began with FIST reviewing Medicaid claims data to identify Medicaid patients seen by Dr. Sheikh. FIST personnel recognized prescriptions that made up a "three drug cocktail" that would typically be prescribed after an abortion. As a result, this led the team to uncover the potential fraudulent claims....