And once all this blows over, Ill pay for everybody, all 300 guests.
Ill fly them all to Italy.
[00:00:14] Matthew Christopher: We grabbed a glass of champagne, and we went for a walk.
And she just starts to say, You know, theres something happening with Paolo.
It’s all a magic carpet ride for Benita Alexander.
He’s going to be in South America.
The impact of the email is so strong, Benita almost faints.
I’m going to go to the Vatican.
I’m going to get it figured out.
I’m so sorry."
[00:01:44] Bob: So, Paolo goes to Rome to fix the wedding.
Meanwhile, Benita starts trying to figure out what’s really going on.
And we grabbed a glass of champagne, and we went for a walk.
And I’m like, “What’s going on?
What’s happening?”
And she just starts to say, “You know, there’s something happening with Paolo.”
And she didn’t like bring up a lot of stuff.
And I think it was new to her, like it was all new to her.
Is this wedding going to happen?
And this is all internal Vatican politics.
[00:03:20] Benita Alexander: At this point, I no longer believe him.
I know, I now know he’s a pathological liar.
But I want all the information before I confront him.
You know, I want, I want unequivocal, hard core proof that he cannot dispute.
And so for…
[00:04:06] Bob: So you don’t let on your suspicions.
[00:04:08] Benita Alexander: Correct.
And once all this blows over, I’ll pay for everybody, all 300 guests.
I’ll fly them all to Italy."
[00:04:38] Bob: She has work to do to unmask Paolo’s lie.
But in the quiet moments, of course, it’s hard.
[00:04:56] Matthew Christopher: We, I mean we had the discussion over the phone.
You know, ‘cause she had to send out the, the emails.
And I’m trying to remember exactly how that happened.
My, my heart sank into a thousand pieces for everyone.
It was really hard.
We all cried because we worked so hard on it.
It was so hard.
And we were working on my collection at the same time.
A woman answers the door with children, probably his real wife and family.
I am not an expert, obviously I cannot diagnose him.
I believe the man is some bang out of sociopath.
He literally lied to me about everything.
So nothing about the wedding was true.
He told me he was divorced.
He was still married.
He’s, he’s hiding another family in a house in Barcelona where we were supposed to move.
It was all a lie.
There was not one single shred of truth to any of it.
I mean it’s insane.
[00:07:08] Bob: At that moment, an even more ghastly realization hits Benita.
Something much worse than a wedding that was called off.
I, I, I just, it’s impossible.
And that thought was so horrifying to me because we’re talking about people’s lives.
And that meant people could be in danger.
You know, this man, this super, so-called super surgeon is not who we think he is.
You know, this man is a fraud, he’s a con man.
[00:08:14] Benita Alexander: And I made the very difficult decision to go public.
I didn’t want to.
I mean I quite frankly was really embarrassed, really humiliated.
I mean I just got conned.
And I thought at the time I might be the only person that had the means to expose him.
[00:08:55] Bob: She reaches out to a Vanity Fair reporter and tells him everything.
Then things got really interesting.
[00:09:45] Bob: Do you remember when the Vanity Fair article came out?
[00:09:47] Matthew Christopher: Yeah.
I was like, holy cow!
I was like this is, this is all starting to un–, unravel.
You know what I mean?
This is starting to come out.
And it needed to come out, it needed to be, her story needed to be talked about.
I mean people go through this stuff.
I mean who does this stuff?
You know what I mean?
Like who does this stuff?
There’s, what is the deal with that crap, you know what I mean?
So it’s like, how does this happen to women?
How does this happen to anybody?
Do you know what I mean?
It’s just, it’s just like crazy to me.
There are a lot of lies in Paolo’s medical past too.
We met Bo last episode.
He let Paolo believe it was just another film about these groundbreaking surgeries.
And he accept that.
And he was, he was well aware of what I was doing.
[00:13:11] Bob: But their friendly reporter/subject relationship turns sour as the day of the airing approaches.
And Bo starts asking harder questions.
So that was 212 hours of, of um, very, very tense conversation.
[00:13:48] Bob: And, and how did you leave it at the end of that conversation?
[00:14:16] Bob: When the film comes out, Bo unloads on Paolo.
But the peers are normally not paid for this, right, it’s sort of an honorable job.
And it’s hard for the reviewers to actually assess the stuff.
They never look at the raw material, for example.
They just read the text.
[00:16:20] Bob: And that is exactly what Bo did.
[00:16:22] Bo Lindquist: Well it was really central to our investigation.
So that was really important.
[00:16:52] Bob: But the lies seem so grandiose.
I mean he was basically saying that he had cured someone who ultimately died, right?
So it was very much a work in progress when he was publishing his uh, scientific texts.
[00:17:24] Bob: So he rushed them out before his patients died.
[00:17:27] Bo Lindquist: Yes.
[00:17:28] Bob: Wow, that’s crazy.
[00:17:38] Bob: He rushed out the papers before his patients died.
It’s hard to imagine.
But when the film airs, the scales are lifted from the eyes of the medical profession too.
What does that feel like.
[00:18:02] Bo Lindquist: Yeah.
That you, you overlooked this, this piece.
And obviously this isn’t, isn’t true, but then nobody did.
It, it, it dawned when when it became clear that we were completely right.
And so that was actually that feels quite satisfactory that there weren’t any more such surgeries done.
[00:20:33] Bo Lindquist: Hopefully.
[00:20:35] Bob: The fallout from the film and the Vanity Fair story is swift.
[00:20:40] Benita Alexander: And this is a huge, huge scandal.
I mean Paolo pulled the wool over so many people’s eyes.
He didn’t just lie to me, he lied to famous institutions, doctors, scientists.
You know, all these people got fooled by Dr. Paolo Macchiarini.
You know, he’s a class A con man, and it was a huge scandal.
There were people in Russia, people in Sweden.
Seven out of those eight patients are dead.
The only patient that’s still alive had this experimental windpipe taken out.
It turned out that he never did any animal experiments before doing this experimental procedure on humans.
You are supposed to do experiments in animals before you try doing something radical in humans.
He didn’t do it.
He broke all the rules, all the laws.
He did get any of the ethical approvals he’s supposed to get.
He, I mean it’s just, it’s just… awful.
It’s so tragic.
He was using people as human guinea pigs.
This thing doesn’t work.
It never had a chance of working.
And yet, he kept doing it.
I mean the details are horrifying.
This thing became dislodged in their throats.
She said she smelled like rotting flesh.
You know, this, this thing just didn’t work.
And he just kept going.
[00:23:08] Bob: It takes a while, but eventually there are consequences for Paolo’s lies.
[00:23:13] Benita Alexander: Oh, it’s embarrassing for a lot of people.
So people stepped down from the Nobel Prize committee in shame.
People at Karolinska stepped down in shame.
And Benita is there.
[00:24:07] Benita Alexander: That’s an interesting question.
It’s just disgust and anger.
It’s much more polite, I would say.
Um, ‘cause no, there’s no screaming objection, this kind of thing.
It’s um, a very sort of polite scene.
I haven’t seen the man in seven years.
And way, way more difficult than I anticipated.
And I, it just, the anger.
[00:26:42] Bob: How did you not yell out in the middle of his testimony?
[00:26:44] Benita Alexander: Well exactly, exactly.
I was just absolutely drained.
[00:27:02] Bob: Paolo was tried for the death of three of his patients.
The results were, unsatisfying.
Is that your understanding?
[00:27:19] Benita Alexander: Yes, absolutely, that’s correct.
The, the next level would be a more qualified court, more experienced and larger.
So, I think there are many things to, to look at still.
There are institutions that don’t necessarily follow the, the standards that they claim to, right.
It, the, the impunity seems to be just as big in both places.
And it’s, it’s sort of a lure of money and fame that, that drives it.
[00:28:27] Bob: The lure of money and fame is very powerful.
Unfortunately, well, in some ways, law often falls behind technology and medical innovation.
That’s a very serious medical crime, right?
[00:29:22] Bob: It’s been six years since Benitas wedding of the century was cancelled.
She’s done a primetime TV special about it.
She’s got a website; she’s talking to us at The Perfect Scam.
She’s still pursuing the story.
[00:29:36] Bob: What is it you want people to know?
And okay, I can do this.
You know, this is embarrassing.
And so people stay quiet.
I mean what was your crime?
You fell in love.
That’s not a crime.
You wanted to trust the person you fell in love with.
That’s not a crime either.
So I want people to stop pointing the finger at the victim.
I want to end victim shaming.
[00:32:00] Bob: Benita has one piece of advice that, well all of us should remember.
[00:32:51] Benita Alexander: Yes.
He railroaded my entire life, you know, and I, so much was at stake.
I’m going to, one way or another, I’m going to be okay.
I’ll land on my feet.
But a little girl?
How dare you, you know, how dare you!
I mean that just incensed me, infuriated me.
And I just, I still to this day cannot fathom what kind of person does that?
It’s just the audacity of that is beyond anything I can imagine.
He, he is a surgeon, which makes it all the more tragic, really.
You know, if, if he had used those skills, and he’s extremely intelligent.
He’s so believable.
He’s so convincing.
That’s why he’s working at the place that awards the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
You know, so people just didn’t check.
[00:35:51] Bob: But looking the part doesn’t explain how Paolo got away with cheating science.
Instead, Bo says, Paolo was able to expose flaws in the way we practice science.
The people in power just didn’t listen.
What was that, was that uh, how, how was he referred to Sweden, et cetera.
I think there are many things to, to look at still.
[00:38:26] Bob: I have to just say this because it’s burdening on my brain.
That this man was already very famous when you met him, right?
[00:38:33] Benita Alexander: Yes.
[00:38:34] Bob: And yet, that still wasn’t nearly enough for him.
I have no idea.
When are you going to stop?
And the answer is, I’m not.
I’m not going to stop until there’s justice.
I mean this isn’t just about me.
This is also about justice for his patients, you know in my case.
[00:39:54] Bob: And as for the future, step one is healing.
And that takes time.
And they get to know you, and they use that information against you.
[00:41:40] Bob: So I asked Benita, how is she today?
[00:41:44] Benita Alexander: Well I am okay, we are okay.
We, we both have a, have maintained a good sense of humor.
And so we laugh about it.
I’m going to punch him."
I’m, okay, you know, but no, we’re fine.
And I am just a survivor.
And I also think you know this turned into this new mission in my life.
And that gives me a lot of comfort and peace.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch online grid Helpline at 877-908-3360.
Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP’s The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
