DETROIT – He poisoned patients with dangerous amounts of chemotherapy so he could bill insurance and Medicare millions of dollars. 

Dr. Farid Fata was a cancer doctor in the Detroit area and was just sentenced to 45 years behind bars.  But News4Jax wanted to know what his patients had endured and how Fata was finally stopped, so we traveled to Michigan to find out.

The victims

Robert Sobieray was referred to Fata in 2010 after some concerns by his primary care doctor. After a battery of tests, Fata told him he had cancer.

"My jaw dropped. I looked at my wife and she started to cry. What do you say? Everything goes blank," said Sobieray recalling the moment he was told he had Multiple Myeloma.

Fata told him he would need chemotherapy once a month for the rest of his life. About a year into it, the chemo caused him to lose his first tooth.

"It just broke off at the gum," said Sobieray. "I asked him about it. My jaw was hurting all the time and he [Fata] said, 'Nothing I'm doing would cause that.'"

But experts testified during Fata's sentencing this month that one of the side effects of the chemo Sobieray was receiving is softening of the jawbone.

He had chemo for 2 and half years. He was down to 4 teeth when Fata's offices were raided in 2013. Soon after, Sobieray consulted with another oncologist who dropped a bomb on him.

"He said there's nothing wrong with you," Sobieray said. "He said you don't even have MGUS. You have nothing wrong with you."

"Don't feel like getting out of bed. Can't get my thoughts straight," said Sobieray.

He is in constant pain now.

"I've got no nerve endings from knees down. My feet and legs hurt so bad all the time," he explained. "My feet and legs hurt so bad all the time. That's why I carry the cane. I don't know if I'm going to fall down either."

Unfortunately, this story  is not the only horrifying story to come out of Fata's office. Prosecutors believe Fata mistreated 553 patients that they know of.

"How dare you. How dare you compromise people's health for your benefit, for money," said Gregory Cadd, who's mother and father were treated by Fata.

Cadd's father died and he says his mother nearly did because of the complications of too much chemo.

"He is nothing but a monster. He is nothing but a greedy monster. He is beyond hate. Hate doesn't even begin to touch what I feel for Farid Fata," said Cadd.

Terry Spurlock really did have lymphoma but says he really didn't need the amount of chemotherapy and other treatments Fata prescribed for him.  Spurlock says he was grossly over-treated with a 4-hour chemo infusion every 30 days.  According to a passage he had from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Spurlock's treatments were supposed to last two years max.  His lasted five years.

"Everybody knows right from wrong and to do that to so many people for so many years, there's something wrong with you," said Spurlock.

News4Jax asked Spurlock what he would say to Fata if he was right here.

"I'd shoot him. If he was sitting right here I'd shoot him," he answered.

Neither Spurlock nor Sobieray asked for second opinions.  They say they didn't ask in part because Fata's office wall was decorated with awards.  They also knew of Fata's reputation at the time and just put too much trust in him.  Both say they'll never do that again and they urge others to always get second, even third opinions.

The Federal False Claims Act

A little-known law finally put Dr. Farid Fata out of business. The law, was put on the books back in 1863.  It gives average citizens great power. Just one day after it was filed against Fata in 2013, he was arrested.

George Karadsheh is the whistleblower in the Fata case. He was Fata's practice manager for two years. News4Jax sat down with David Haron, Karadsheh's attorney in Michigan, who filed the lawsuit under the Federal False Claims Act.

It's nicknamed Lincoln's Law, because president Abraham Lincoln signed it to have some recourse when Union troops received bad horses and equipment from war profiteers during the Civil War. It gives the average citizen extraordinary powers.

"Anyone who knows of fraud, anyone, you, me, anyone in the room, who knows of fraud against the federal government...that person can bring a lawsuit against the person who's committing fraud, on behalf of the federal government," explained attorney David Haron.

Fata was defrauding the government, but was doing much worse to his patients. According to Haron, here's how he was stopped.

"The minute he found out something wasn't right, he called the U.S. Attorney's Office. And it stopped 4 days later. That's like the government coming in when a bank robbery is in progress. That's the best analogy," added Haron.

News4Jax learned Fata might have been stopped by another whistle blower years earlier.  Going the federal lawsuit route got things done in this case. However, going to the state of Michigan, unfortunately, did not.

"What do you have to say to warrant an investigation of a physician to stop them from doing harm to their patients?" asked Nurse Angela Swantek, who complained about Fata to the Michi

gan agency that's a watchdog for medical professionals three years before Karadsheh filed his whistleblower suit.  

"I named the medications, how they are supposed to be given, how they were given in his office, for example a chemo drug is supposed to be given in a chemo push in 30 seconds. He gives it in over an hour," Swantek told News4Jax.

The state of Michigan completed it's investigation one year later, and found Fata was doing nothing wrong. Swantek didn't know where else to go and dropped the issue.

Haron says any medical professional who saw what was going on in Fata's office had a responsibility to protect patients. And in the end, only Karadsheh did.

"We all get to a fork in the road where we have a choice: we can speak up, complain internally, we can go outside or we can run. George [Karadsheh] didn't run," Haron said.

So how do you stop this type of abuse?  If you're an employee or a patient, you have to show an attorney substantial proof of fraud in order to file a whistle-blower lawsuit.

To keep yourself safe from the type of medical abuse Spurlock and other Fata patients faced, you're encouraged to get a second opinion.

And if you feel a doctor's behavior will result in a loss of life, or loss of quality of life, then make a formal complaint with your state health department.

Robert Sobieray, who lost all but one of his teeth because of the chemo Fata gave him for cancer he didn't even have is thankful to Karadsheh for finally stopping Fata.

"I want to say thank you to him. It must've taken a lot of nerve to do it," said Sobieray.

The government recovered $17 million from Fata. As the whistle blower, George Karadsheh will get up to 25-percent of that money. These lawsuits have an incentive component to it because the government wants to stop waste. There's an estimated $100 billion of Medicare and Medicaid abuse every year.