Feds: Doc made cuts for cash
By KIM JANSSEN Federal Courts Reporter August 31, 2013 2:08AM
Dr. Vittorio Guerriero in 1979.
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Updated: September 1, 2013 2:37AM
To those he treated at a dozen Chicago-area hospitals, he’s Dr. “Vic” Guerriero, a third-generation doctor with a reassuring 35 years of experience.
To the feds, he’s “Physician E” — a surgeon they say cut “medically unnecessary” holes in the necks of his patients as part of a ghoulish and sometimes deadly money-making scheme.
It isn’t the first time his ethics and competence have been questioned.
But now Vittorio Guerriero is facing a fight for his reputation, his career and potentially his freedom as one of the key targets of a major federal investigation of an alleged multimillion-dollar Medicare and Medicaid fraud at the now-closed Sacred Heart Hospital on Chicago’s West Side, sources say.
Guerriero, 64, who lives in Lake County near North Chicago, hasn’t been charged with any crime, and he continues to hold a license to practice in Illinois. He denies any wrongdoing and has “always acted to the highest standards of his profession,” according to his attorney, Anthony Onesto.
But sources familiar with the ongoing federal probe told the Sun-Times Guerriero is the doctor the FBI earlier this year alleged in court papers had performed 28 questionable tracheotomies on poor, elderly and mostly black patients at Sacred Heart, five of which resulted in death.
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