Cancer patient finally gets some justice

SEATTLE – Lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer and weak from massive doses of chemotherapy, Eric Drew began to get mail.

But the only well-wishes in these letters were from banks and credit card companies, thanking him for opening new accounts – accounts he knew nothing about. After a maddening six months of calling the companies, police, reporters and collection agencies, Drew discovered who had stolen his identity: a technician at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, where he received the first of his two bone marrow transplants last fall.

The technician, Richard W. Gibson, 42, was sentenced to 16 months in prison Friday, the first person in the nation sentenced under a new law designed to protect patients’ privacy, federal prosecutors said. He also will be required to pay at least $15,000 in restitution, including reimbursing Drew for the time and money he spent trying to clear his name.

“This court considers your behavior in this case to be some of the most deplorable I’ve seen in 15 years on the bench,” U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez told Gibson.

The sentence was four months longer than prosecutors requested.

Drew, a mortgage banker from Los Gatos, Calif., recently had his second bone-marrow transplant at the University of Minnesota medical center. He described his ordeal in a statement videotaped Monday and played in court Friday.

“I felt completely ignored, frustrated and totally violated,” he said, sitting in a hospital bed in his Minneapolis apartment. “Nobody seemed to empathize or care about this situation whatsoever, and my doctors and family wanted me to drop it because they were worried about the huge amount of stress this was placing on me. They were afraid it would actually cause my impending bone marrow transplant to fail.”

Drew, 37, discovered he had leukemia in early 2003 after donating blood, said his lawyer, Gregory Ursich. He began treatment at Stanford University Medical Center and was transferred to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in September 2003.

Within a few weeks, the mail started. Drew was stunned – he had just closed all of his credit card accounts before moving to Seattle. He called the companies and banks about every fraudulent application he learned of, and urged them not to issue credit. Some went ahead and did it anyway.

“My frustration level grew as more and more application confirmations and then collection calls started to come in,” he said.

“From my sickbed, I called the banks who issued the credit and told them of the fraudulent activity, but most of them refused to stop the accounts without notarized affidavits. There was no possible way I could obtain these affidavits from my hospital bed and in my condition with my limited funds. I was so furious I could not sleep at night.”

The identity theft consumed his life and made it impossible for him to continue to raise money for bone marrow drives, charities and individual patients. He previously had raised $250,000 for such causes, he said.

When he was well enough to leave the hospital after his transplant in December 2003, he began visiting the Seattle Police Department, banks and even the post office, tracking down the letter carrier who delivered to the address associated with the fraudulent accounts.

Even with the address, he said, he received little help from authorities. Sometimes, he said, he was so desperate that he unhooked his infusion lines at night to meet strangers who thought they might have information about the perpetrator.

Stores admitted that they might have videotapes of the perpetrator. But, they told him, they weren’t willing to review months of tape to find a few images.

Finally, Drew got a break. A local television reporter jumped on the story and within three weeks was able to obtain video of someone making fraudulent purchases.

Drew was stunned. It was Gibson, who at least once had drawn Drew’s blood.

Gibson was arrested and fired. He pleaded guilty in August to violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which became effective in April 2003.

“I am very sorry about what I did,” Gibson told the judge Friday.

Gibson used about $9,100 of Drew’s credit to buy jewelry, video games, a barbecue grill — items for himself as well as Christmas presents for his wife and five children. His lawyer, Paula Deutsch, told the judge he was under tremendous financial pressure.

The judge didn’t buy it.

“You took advantage of the that position of trust you were in,” Martinez said. “You did so for the most base reason of all: greed.”