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Surgeon jailed for fraud after fake cancer claim A
CONSULTANT surgeon has been jailed for four years for defrauding €750,000
from insurance companies by claiming his wife had breast cancer.
Dr Emad Massoud and his wife Gehan from Ratoath in Co. Meath were condemned
by the judge for perpetrating a particularly nasty and evil fraud.
He imposed a three-year jail sentence on Gehan but suspended it because
he said he didn’t want both parents of their family to be incarcerated
at the same time.
Judge Patrick McCartan said: “The offence was done simply to satisfy
the greed of two people well capable of supporting their family.”
The pair hatched their plot after Gehan’s mother had sought the
assistance of her daughter and son-in-law when she was diagnosed with
breast cancer in Egypt.
They then used her tissue sample for their fraud.
Gehan agreed to let her husband create a scar on her body consistent with
a tumour having been removed from her left breast.
On the first day of the trial Dr Massoud said that it was he who had removed
237 grammes of tissue from his wife’s breast rather than his colleague,
Dr Mohamed Hilal, as he had fraudulently stated and signed on the insurance
claim forms.
Judge McCartan described the offence as an appalling tragedy and noted
the couple’s four young daughters ranging in age from seven to 21
would suffer hugely.
The couple had pleaded not guilty to intent to defraud the insurance companies
by falsely pretending that Gehan Massoud had suffered breast cancer.
The Massouds were found guilty of defrauding €685,658 from Scottish
Provident Ltd and €45,338 from Lifetime Assurance Company Ltd.
The jury of seven men and four women deliberated for two hours before
returning the guilty verdicts.
The couple have dual Irish and Egyptian citizenship.
Dr Massoud had been working as a consultant surgeon with both the Wellman
Clinic and the Nobel Clinic which operate out of the same building in
Eccles Street near Dublin city centre.
Expert witness Dr Maureen Smith told the court a DNA profile taken from
a sample of Gehan Massoud’s blood did not match that of the tissue
sample provided to the Mater Hospital for diagnosis.
She also said that there was a 99.53 per cent chance that the tissue donor
was Gehan Massoud’s mother.
The court also heard a mammogram taken of Gehan Massoud’s left breast
a month after the alleged operation showed no signs of any surgery or
tissue being removed. |
