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The Death Threat
46 Plays2 years ago
In Episode 2 of "Benita & The Berracas," journalist Benita Alexander discusses the frightening repercussions of publicly exposing her lying fiance, the so-called "super surgeon," Dr. Paolo Macchiarini. When she receives an ominous threat, Benita even brings in the FBI.
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Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Benita and the Baracas podcast. Baraca is Colombian slang for a resilient woman who's been through something difficult but still stands strong. A Baraca is basically a badass.
Benita's Story Unfolds
00:00:28
Speaker
And after what I've been through, I am all about supporting badass women. If you don't already know my crazy story, it's a love story. Gone horribly wrong.
00:00:42
Speaker
I was engaged to this guy, a famous surgeon and scientist who turned out to be a pathological con man. The story is insane and it's been told all over the world. It's been on ABC. I'm whoopi Goldberg and this is the con.
00:01:07
Speaker
the Dr. Oz show, the Dr. Death podcast. And I even made a film about it called He Lied About Everything. Okay, this is episode two. Thank you guys for coming back again.
Casual Conversations and Revelations
00:01:24
Speaker
And I this time I'm going to have you guys introduce yourselves. Well, thank you for having us again. I am
00:01:33
Speaker
I am the ride or die from the United States. My name is Leah Lee and I'm Australian in case you hadn't picked up on that. And I met Ben in Manhattan. We struck up a friendship pretty quickly and we've maintained contact all these thousands of years later. Here we are. That's right. Here we are.
00:02:02
Speaker
Okay, so do you all have a drink since this is kind of like girls happy hour when we do these recordings? Salute, salute. I'm not actually drinking this one but my sister sent me these lovely bottles of organic wine today and I love the sayings on them because this one says pairs well with the sound of laughter and moments to remember. Oh, that's nice. And this one says,
00:02:30
Speaker
pair as well with the sun and the company of your best friends. Ah, that's fantastic. Well, all I've got is an empty box. I love it. I'll find a use for it.
The Unraveling of Lies
00:02:44
Speaker
So just to quickly recap for our listeners, viewers, on the last episode, I basically explained how I figured out that my fiance was literally lying about everything. And I went on this investigative mission to find out the truth about everything, and he had
00:03:05
Speaker
I mean, just to run down the list. He lied about everything to do with our wedding. He didn't know any of the celebrities he said were coming to the wedding, who we actually sent invitations to. He was still married, even though he told me he was divorced. So he never could have legally married me in the first place. On and on and on. And then he had a whole third family in the house where we were supposed to be moving after the wedding and little kids. So it's just the list of lies is endless, right?
00:03:31
Speaker
It was crazy. And I was devastated, as we talked about in the last episode. But I also immediately felt this kind of overwhelming, actually, responsibility to talk about it and let the world know who Dr. Paolo Meccarini really is, because he's this famous surgeon and scientist. And if he was lying to me like that, I thought there's just no way in hell he's not lying in his professional life.
00:03:59
Speaker
really scary. So I decided to go public. And I first did that in January of 2016, which is about six months after I found everything out with an article in Vanity Fair. So here I am. I think I'm doing a good thing, the right thing. I think I'm doing something for the
00:04:20
Speaker
you know, greater good. Yeah. And I think I've got to expose this guy. It's my obligation to, I didn't want to go public. I didn't want to air my whole personal life to the whole world. I mean, that's not fun.
00:04:35
Speaker
But it was embarrassing. I mean, it's not fun just to raise your hand and to announce the world, hey, I just got conned. But what I was not expecting, and what I want to talk about on this episode is how I got slammed for going public. And it was fast, and it was brutal.
Public Exposure and Threats
00:04:58
Speaker
This is episode two, the death threat. Note that it contains adult language and content and may not be suitable for all audiences. I want to start with almost immediately after I went public in Vanity Fair, I get this very threatening email from a colleague of Paulo's. And to say that this thing is shocking is
00:05:25
Speaker
Perhaps a bit of an understatement. I've never talked in detail about this before. It was a message that gave me chills.
00:05:34
Speaker
He's basically in this email, he's asking me to recant my story, which, I'm sorry, why the fuck would I recant a story when the guy I'm talking about is the liar? But the killer was, your only agenda was to hurt this man. If Paulo's career is over as a result of another jealous, self-centered human, you,
00:05:56
Speaker
It also means that there are countless patients throughout this world, which you know is the undisputed truth, that will no longer have the hope they and their families had of being given a better quality of life, of life itself. Their blood will be on your hands, Benita.
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah. That was bizarre, wasn't it? But the reality was you were right. You were on the right track. The truth has come out. And the only person that was damaging patients was Paolo Macaridi.
00:06:30
Speaker
I went public to expose all of Paolo's insane lies in his personal life. But just a few weeks later, a shocking documentary came out in Sweden that revealed he was also lying in his professional life. And those lies were dangerous and had horrific consequences.
Medical Crimes and Their Impact
00:06:51
Speaker
Yes.
00:06:52
Speaker
Just to recap for people that don't know, in a nutshell, he put this artificial trachea, this artificial windpipe that was made out of plastic into eight patients. Seven of those patients are dead. The only one that's still alive had this thing taken out.
00:07:08
Speaker
And then it came out that he did not have the proper ethical approvals to do this procedure. He did not do the necessary and required animal experiments, you know, before doing it on humans. So he was literally freaking using people as human guinea pigs.
00:07:25
Speaker
People who had no other hope, who came to him because he was their last hope. And the details are so horrifying. This thing is sitting. It got dislodged in these patients' throats. And then it was rotting. It was literally rotting inside their bodies. And so the mother of one of the patients, this lovely young woman in Russia who didn't even need the damn thing,
00:07:52
Speaker
talks about how she smelled like rotting flesh, rotting fish before she died. Bottom line, this thing didn't work. So he can make the threats that he did in that letter and think that that's okay, because that's not okay. I don't care what profession you are, but the threats that he made were blatantly, I am going to hurt you. Oh, yeah. Fuck that. This is what he actually wrote. He wrote to me.
00:08:23
Speaker
In your simple dark twisted mind, I am sure you will research me. I encourage that. You will lose no matter what. As I come from a world people fantasize about. Connections that run far deeper than the darkest trenches you or your colleagues may have had to endure whilst building a career in your profession. A threat much? This guy thinks he's a wizard. He comes from a world that we can't even dream about. Like woo!
00:08:53
Speaker
And then the other line was, may I advise that whomever your connections may or may not be in law enforcement, we simply do not care. Paulo and his family are like my family. Watch out. Why didn't he just say, I'm representing the mob? Really? Was he hinting at that? Basically, that's what he said. That's what he's saying, yeah.
00:09:18
Speaker
family. We got connections you don't have. So I'm the angry little bitch that's come along that tried to ruin him. He actually wrote here, this is what he said about the article, realistically, that article was something one of honor would expect to read on the front page of the National Inquirer, a picture of said scorned woman riding a broom. That's right. Right. Now I'm a witch on a broom.
00:09:43
Speaker
Get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck out of here. It's a not even veiled attempt to scare the shit out of me, right? He's alluding to the mob and his dark connections. It's a threat and asking me to recant the story. And I read this, I was pissed. I wasn't scared. I was fucking pissed.
Whistleblowing Challenges
00:10:03
Speaker
Go to hell. You're trying to scare me off? No. But this is a funny part that relates to YouTube.
00:10:09
Speaker
This is talking about when we went to his house in Barcelona. You hid under your wig and sent your friends to Paulo's house, whilst your friends went to speak to him. Producers and journalists have balls, no matter their gender. Apparently I have no balls. He's a little sexually obsessed though. I'm sorry to inform you, you have no balls.
00:10:38
Speaker
And when he's threatening me, he's like, use your imagination about what's going to happen to me. Aw, yes. So did you ever wake up with the horse's head in your bed? What? Just wondering. Just wondering. Just a couple. But wait. On a serious note. On a serious note.
00:11:02
Speaker
I was scared for you, Benita, a little bit. I was, because I know how you live, the lifestyle, living in the city. You walk a lot, you're in the streets a lot, walking the dog, whatever. I was a little bit concerned because they know where you live and they have access to you if they really wanted to. Yeah, I know that's fine. I'm not going to lie. I wasn't scared. It was concerned.
00:11:33
Speaker
because didn't you go to the authorities? Yeah, so that's what I was about to say. I mean, I'm joking about it now. I was pissed when I read it, but it was a little scary. One of the closing lines in this threatening email is this, never ever mess with a man's family, especially familiars with unlimited resources and connections. Someone is always watching and listening in today's world.
00:12:02
Speaker
And I reported it to the FBI because I wanted it on record, you know, I mean, should something, God forbid, actually happen. Yeah, I had some people that were like, my mother, I mean, obviously, it's my mother, she's going to be but she was terrified, you know.
00:12:18
Speaker
People who were and I never read her the detail of this letter But there were some people who were really shaken and really, you know, like are you sure you're okay? Should you go somewhere? You know and there are people that were really worried that by going public and by exposing this man I had really put myself in a very vulnerable position and that brings up this whole question of
00:12:44
Speaker
In essence, I'm like a whistleblower, right? And the medical stuff would end up being exposed by these whistleblower doctors in Sweden. There are four of them that all banded together. And it was their tenacious efforts.
00:12:58
Speaker
and exposing him in Sweden that brought all the medical fraud and crime to light. And they faced repercussions. They were chastised. They were threatened with being fired. So it's really difficult when you're up against somebody
00:13:15
Speaker
that powerful and that successful, it's really difficult to be the guy that's, or the girl, the person that's gonna put your hand up and say, hey, I got something to say. I got secrets to reveal. Nobody really wants that stuff to come out. But I still get people that are worried because I've been so relentless in talking about this and because I refuse to stop talking about this. That's what I think the listeners don't understand is that
00:13:41
Speaker
This shit is real. This is somebody that is masquerading and harming people and giving people false hope. Lee, you're in the medical profession. What are your thoughts on this as far as what he's done? Oh, yeah. Well, we don't accept anything like that kind of behavior globally. What he's done is reprehensible.
00:14:09
Speaker
We can't prove that, but there's no way in my mind that he didn't know that this stupid thing didn't work. And yet he keeps, and he would have kept going. He will say, anytime you do an experimental procedure, you know, the first heart transplants, lung transplants, blah, blah, blah, people die, which they do.
00:14:29
Speaker
When you realize that it's not working, that's when you're supposed to stop and put the brakes on and he didn't stop. He kept going. And not only that, all those heart transplants, lung transplants, they had the ethical approvals. They did all the necessary steps before they did it. He didn't. So you can't, and Lee can speak medically, but
00:14:52
Speaker
I know. You can't use that as an excuse. This is the really big question in my mind, right? Because you're right. Whenever you want to do something new in medicine like that, you have to go by ethics committees, you have to show your evidence, you have to show your medical models with regard to animal studies and so forth. And you have to prove at each point through all of these lots and lots of steps that what you're doing is safe, that it can work.
00:15:21
Speaker
And obviously what really worries me is where was that? Why wasn't he stopped? He wasn't in his backyard doing this.
00:15:35
Speaker
Right, this is why this is such a big scandal and has been such a huge scandal in Sweden and heads rolled. I mean, people, Karolinska, where he was doing these, some of them, he was also doing some in Russia, but people on the Nobel Prize committee stepped down in shame because of this. People at, the heads of Karolinska, people at the heads stepped down in shame or were fired because of this. This was a giant scandal because it's kind of like, how did you let this happen? Exactly. And so, and that's why when people say to me,
00:16:05
Speaker
Well, how could you be so stupid? How did you not, you know, how did you not see this? How did you pull the wool over so many people's eyes? I mean, I was like down here on the totem pole, right? It's like major institutions, doctors, scientists, world famous places. I mean, so many people believe this guy. He's a snake charmer. And so these medical professionals, they got caught up in the charm just like you did.
00:16:30
Speaker
So he's definitely an influencer. He's got charisma. He's got charm. And he was able to sell him some snake oil. Big time. It's unfortunate that so many lives were sacked, lost because of it.
00:16:45
Speaker
But it's like he was selling hope, right? And I always say that that's the parallel between the medicine and the personal, even though it's very different. He was selling his patient's hope. Everybody wants hope. Everybody wants to believe in a miracle, especially people that have no other hope. And so he very convincingly was selling this, like a snake oil, whatever you call them, salesmen.
00:17:09
Speaker
He's selling hope. He's selling false hope. But he was doing the same thing to me. He's giving me this false hope of this beautiful, happily ever after, and he's really good at it. He's a class A bullshit. I still don't understand, though, the gulf between the personal and the medical sides of this because
00:17:33
Speaker
In our personal lives, we have our intuition to guide us. We may or may not do a Google of somebody's name to see if anything terrible comes up that they've been in jail or anything, but even then, what you can find out is limited.
00:17:47
Speaker
Compared to a research institution which has procedures in place, which has people that check all of this stuff from Wodego that know how to get a research paper and read it and ascertain whether it's true or it's false, whether the numbers add up or don't add up.
00:18:08
Speaker
They failed in so many tick boxes. It's freakish. And I have never heard of that kind of thing going on anywhere in the world, in any medical institution, in any university. If I hand in a paper that I've dodged up, my university will pick that up in a minute. So how can an institution that prides itself on excellence and ethics and
00:18:35
Speaker
I just, it's amazing. Well, and it was so many steps along the way of people not asking questions.
The Psychology of Deception
00:18:43
Speaker
And then I think what happened is, and it would come out that there are things on his resume that are fabricated as well. And that was actually one of the things that Vanity Fair exposed. And
00:18:54
Speaker
All along the way, the man is so charming and so convincing that I think what happens is when you have somebody like that who is that charming and that convincing and walks the walk and talks the talk and appears to be everything that he says he is, people just don't check. People just don't check because why would this man lie? He has all these credentials. He works for this place. He works where they give the Nobel Prize in medicine, blah, blah, blah. So people just didn't check people. And I think he got away with
00:19:25
Speaker
I'm gonna use the phrase got away with murder, but I'm kind of not joking. But he got away with hell because people just, they didn't check. They just assumed, you know, they thought he was the super surgeon. They thought this man walked on water and he just, and that's how he got away with it for so long. It's kind of like that movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. Catch me if you can. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, thinking about that,
00:19:51
Speaker
Do you recall how we correlated his actions to so many different scenes from different movies? Oh my God, yeah. I just now got another connection. That's right. So Ria, if I can stop you for one second, Nancy, we were, I can't even remember how this started. We started joking about how so many of his, his lies were so ridiculous to me, right? And then we started realizing, Nancy and I one day started realizing that they were copied from scenes from movies and then,
00:20:20
Speaker
Nancy went like crazy because we were like, he's like, oh my God, that's in this movie. That's in this movie. I mean, it was kind of nuts. And then I was like, you know, he flies internationally all the time. He watches movies all the time on the plane. I'm like, that's scary. And he actually watches movies and half of his lies came from scenes he watched in movies. Yeah. That's a very interesting point. It's very, it's very twisted. Yeah, it's very twisted. I can't remember the movies. Do you, Nancy?
00:20:49
Speaker
Well, Sex and the City was one of them for sure. Mr. Big, you know, that whole character, the stagecoach, you know, the horse and carriage going through Central Park and... Pretty woman. Yeah, pretty woman. Yeah, you know, those are the ones just from the personal standpoint, but now the other movie just popped in because I just saw that scene in the Leonardo DiCaprio. Oh, I can't believe you can't, yeah.
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah, because because it got it kept building and building and building. I got away with that. I got away with it. Let me try this. Let me try this. Let me try this. You know, so
00:21:29
Speaker
Well, the thing is they do keep, and this is true of all sociopaths, they do keep getting away with it, right? And so then I think that just makes them more brazen and older because- Yeah, builds up their confidence. Okay, I got away with that. Let me up the ante, you know? And even with me, okay, everybody's believing this lie. Let me take another notch and then I'm going to add the Pope and all this.
00:21:53
Speaker
Maybe Paulo did think of himself as being like that character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch Me If You Can. He was a serious con man and faked being a pilot and a doctor. But once I went public, Paulo's lies finally caught up to him.
00:22:12
Speaker
He is facing criminal charges in Sweden. The trial is set for the end of April.
Pursuit of Justice
00:22:17
Speaker
This is in connection with the deaths of three of the seven patients. Those are the ones that were operated on in Sweden. And he's facing charges of aggravated assault against these three patients. And they're pretty serious about it. I mean, Sweden
00:22:33
Speaker
This is a huge dent in Sweden's image. They're very proud people, very proud country. And this was embarrassing, just as it was embarrassing for me, it was incredibly embarrassing for them and for Karolinska to finally, and they fought it for a while. They kept China.
00:22:51
Speaker
you know, it took a while before they finally were like, yeah, okay, he's a fraud and fired him and, you know, pursued these criminal charges. And I
00:23:05
Speaker
Who knows what will happen? Who knows if the man will even show up? I don't know if they're going to extradite him or what will happen. I'm crossing my fingers that he's actually forced to face the music this time, at least for some of it. Well, at least for the families. There's no pricing you can put on that.
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's the reason I keep talking is because the patients of those families deserve justice. It's not about me. This is not a revenge mission. I want this man to face the music. I personally think he should be behind bars. He definitely should not be effing practicing medicine anymore. That's scary. And he should have Bubba as his roommate.
00:23:52
Speaker
But if you were a parent of one of those people, partner, parent of one of those people,
00:24:01
Speaker
I'd be like, I'd be out for his, I want his trachea ripped out and I'd be doing it myself. I don't know if you remember the young Turkish girl, she's also in the Dr. Death, her story's in the Dr. Death podcast. Her story to me was the most upsetting. She was this young, 20s, beautiful, absolutely beautiful young girl and it all started with
00:24:23
Speaker
she was had some sweating problem or something and that's what she has and there was some botched surgery for sweating under her arms and they somehow I think they nicked her trachea somehow during that surgery and then she ends up in Paulo's hands and it it the details of what happened to her are so awful the very first time he operated on her
00:24:42
Speaker
he just wanted to see what was going on. So he cracks her chest open and does like open heart surgery for no other reason than he wants to see what the hell is going on. And that surgery went wrong and all her problems started from there. And she ended up dying. She had some insane number of surgeries and the details are at the end she was
00:25:02
Speaker
It's so sad, but I met with her dad. He just looked at me and he just said, you know, I will not rest until that man is punished for murdering my daughter. And he was so destroyed. Yeah, yeah. Just destroyed. And not an anger doesn't quite get it. And heartbroken, he was just
00:25:26
Speaker
absolutely destroyed and determined to have Paulo Pei and I will not stop talking because A, he needs to face the music and he needs to be behind bars and B, I now have this sort of secondary mission of being able to be a voice for other women and to let people know that, look, this happened
Empowerment and Caution
00:25:47
Speaker
to me. It shouldn't have happened to me and it did. And that does show you that this really can happen to anybody. And I don't want women.
00:25:56
Speaker
to crawl under the bed and hide and there are some women's lives, some of these women that reach out to me, they're absolutely devastated and decimated and feel like they can't go on and that should not be the case. Like everybody makes mistakes. Okay, you got duped. Well, you got duped because these guys are
00:26:17
Speaker
predators in a way, right? They're not unlike any other criminal. They target their prey just like a serial killer would. And the one common thread usually in people like the women in the love scams that get duped is vulnerability.
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, whatever is going on in your life, whether you just got out of a relationship or divorce, you lost a job, you lost a loved one, whatever it is, if you're vulnerable, it's like they have a vulnerability radar, like they zero in and like, Ooh, I got her, you know, and
00:26:49
Speaker
And that's one of the things I try to teach women, is that if you're vulnerable, whatever is going on in your life, if you're vulnerable, that's when you really have to have your guard up. You really got to be careful. Because that's when these guys, just like a criminal, they swoop in and they go after you. So just to wrap this up, I may have asked you both this before. I'm not sure. But if he were sitting where I'm sitting right now, what would you say to him?
00:27:18
Speaker
I don't want to speak to him because there's
Speculations and Future Questions
00:27:23
Speaker
no point. I can't believe a thing that comes out of his mouth. So there is nothing to be gained by me speaking to him. What I might do is send in a couple of my friends with some big secure keys that can lock him away and see if he'd like to have something artificially inserted into him.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah, let's cut open his brain and think about what the fuck were you thinking? How about that? Do you know what I'm saying? It's like, let's open up your heart and find out how the hell could you include someone's child in this? Let's talk about that motherfucker. Let's talk about the fact of how you took these families and gave them false hope for this little, little Plato thing you created, you know?
00:28:12
Speaker
I just, you know, I want to know like, it's almost like Silence of the Lab, you know, you that you know, you want to think of the mind of the, you know, what are they thinking and it's like, I just really want to know what the fuck was the thing? You know, the thing is you it intrigued me. Why? This is what
00:28:32
Speaker
We're gonna talk about on the next episode because the big there are two big lingering money questions, right? The which we get asked all the time in which there are no answers to but the first one is
00:28:45
Speaker
What the hell was his plan? What the hell was his end game? Because I ended up uncovering all the lies. I canceled the wedding. He had let this thing go so far, six weeks before the wedding, when everybody already bought their tickets and was planned their trips and everything. So if I hadn't called off the wedding, what the hell was he going to do? What was going to happen? 300 people show up in Italy for this wedding that can't happen, isn't going to happen. What the hell was his plan? I would love to know the answer to that one.
00:29:15
Speaker
And that's a question that comes up a lot on the internet, too. Honestly. What the fuck? How far were you going to take it? I think the sad truth is when you're looking for an answer and there isn't one. He didn't care. He wasn't going to be there.
00:29:30
Speaker
He didn't care. He's on to the next thing. He doesn't give a shit. Never gave a shit. I always say he would have come up with some last minute emergency. There's been a threat on the Pope's life. Probably. There's been a threat against one of these wars. China. Maybe. And oh my God, I'm so sorry. But then, even if he did that,
00:29:50
Speaker
even if he called the whole thing off, I'm still there. I'm still supposed to get married to you. I still have my wedding dress and everything. What was he gonna do with me? He didn't care. But that's another movie. That's another movie. Like, how many movies have you seen being left at the altar? And then to wrap this up, the other big elusive question is why, you know, why in the hell
00:30:17
Speaker
Did he do any of this, you know, he wasn't getting money from, you know, he didn't, he didn't, you know, a lot of the women that contact me lost unfortunately a lot of money and the guy was in it for the money. Money was not his motive. So the big money question is why, and we will explore that on the next episode. I'll be talking with a number of different friends in the next episode who sort of lived all this with me.
00:30:42
Speaker
One of them is my dear friend Tia, who is just hilarious. And she has a very funny theory on how he thought he was getting away with it. OK. Which we will talk about next time. I love when we call Tia from Barcelona. Oh, my god. I know we're going to talk about that in the next episode. Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Yes. That's a good story. And that has never been told in full detail. No, no. We'll call that on the next episode. For sure.
00:31:12
Speaker
I'm going to once again, Nancy, ask you to close out the show since I cannot pronounce this damn Barack word. And I think I still can't. And even with my wine, I still can't. Cheers. My love to my writer, guys. Thank you again. So on behalf of all the beautiful women out there, this is Benita and the Baracas wishing you well, peace, love, and blessings. Cheers. Until next time. Love you guys. Until next time.
00:31:43
Speaker
This episode is hosted and executive produced by me, Benita Alexander, director of photography and editor, Chad Harper, guests, Nancy Kumba and Lee McKenzie, hairstylist, Alfred Tom, original music, Kunta official beats. This is Benita and the Barakas. You can find me on Instagram at love.com. L O V E C O N N E D.