Free Under the Knife: A Beautiful Woman, a Phony Doctor, and a Shocking Homicide by Diane Fanning Page B

organization did not require its members to be physicians, but he alluded to his affiliation with it in a manner that made it sound like a claim of medical school education.
    BY 1997, DEAN BEGAN PASSING HIMSELF OFF AS A DERMATOLO gist. His ruse convinced enough people that when Linda Burke prepared to move from San Francisco to New York, her dermatologist on the West Coast recommended Dr. Dean Faiello.
    The skies were gray on the winter morning that Linda approached Dean’s office building for the first time to finish the hair removal she started in California. Vicious cold blanketed the city. She thought it quite odd that in the middle of the winter in Manhattan, her new doctor sported a golden tan. All the other dermatologists she knew tended to look pasty every month of the year, avoiding over-exposure to the rays that induced such a glow.
    The tan, though, did add to Dean’s exceptional good looks, as did the genetic endowment of glorious dark eyelashes, the man-made, tailored arch of his eyebrows and the symmetry of his tight, fresh beard. Dean gave off an air that said he was conscious of the perfection of his looks—much like the smug smirk on the face of a haughty cat after an intense session of meticulous grooming.
    Dean, in a soft voice, explained the wonders of his state-of-the-art laser hair-removal machine. He told her that he used it on himself on a regular basis.
Like that isn’t obvious
, she thought.
    Linda laid back on the table for her treatment. She remained prone, trying to relax. “I’m going to apply the specialty healing lotion now,” Dean told her.
    Linda opened her eyes and saw Dean squeezing a thick liquid into his gloved hand. The label on the bottleread: “Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion.” Bemused, she shut her eyes and felt the soothing coolness on her skin.
    She assumed, based on her physician’s referral, that Dean was a medical doctor. He never told her he was. She never thought to ask.
    And she never thought about Dean Faiello again in the seven years that followed.
    DURING LINDA BURKE’S TREATMENT SESSION, DEAN DID nothing illegal, immoral or unethical. But he was unquestionably committing illegal acts when he wrote prescriptions for Stadol and signed Dr. Laurie Polis’ name. The drug, prescribed for migraine headaches, was hard to find on the streets, and Dean used as much as a bottle a day to feed his habit. When he started using Stadol, the bottles were $100 apiece; but as time went on, the price rose to $250 a pop, making it a rather costly addiction. Often, he used his American Express card to pay for his Stadol, creating a paper trail that investigators would eventually follow with ease.
    When his clients got prescriptions for Stadol from their doctors, to relax them during laser procedures, Dean often pocketed the slightly used bottles while the customer was too dazed to notice. If one of them called about it after his head cleared, he found it easy to believe Dean’s denial, and to suspect that he had lost it someplace else.
    AFTER DEAN MOVED INTO HIS UPPER EAST SIDE OFFICE, DR. Polis was flipping through
New York
magazine. An ad for the opening of a new laser clinic and multi-specialty medical center caught her eye. The marketing angle replicated the one she used for her own business.
    She looked closer, her curiosity transforming into surprise, then sinking in a queasy recognition of betrayal. The director and laserist listed in the ad for this new centerwas none other than Dean Faiello. He’d manipulated her sympathy with a tale of fatal illness and, under a cloak of deception, used her expertise to further his own business objectives.
    She knew New York state did not require a medical license to operate a laser—not for hair removal. But Dean offered more. He described himself as a medical practitioner well versed in laser technology and willing to remove “ugly brown spots” and other lesions.
    Dr. Polis was alarmed.
How could Dean know the difference between