Surgeon and wife guilty of huge cancer insurance fraud
Irish Independant / 17th February 2008
A consultant surgeon and his wife were yesterday found guilty of defrauding over €730,000 from insurance companies through a false breast cancer claim.

Dr Emad Massoud (52) and his wife Gehan Massoud (45), a nurse, were convicted by a jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. Judge Patrick McCartan remanded Emad Massoud in custody and his wife on continuing bail for sentence in March.

There are still civil proceedings in the High Court against the Massouds in which Scottish Provident and Lifetime Assurance are looking for the €730,996 to be paid back. If the case is successful, the Massouds will have to sell their own remaining asset -- their family home -- which has been valued at €750,000.

Yesterday was day-15 of their criminal trial during which they had pleaded not guilty to intending to defraud the insurance companies by falsely pretending that Mrs Massoud had suffered breast cancer and that there was an obligation on them to settle serious illness claims.

The Massouds were found guilty of defrauding €685,658 from Scottish Provident Ltd on March 25, 2002 and €45,338 on February 22, 2002 from Lifetime Assurance Company Ltd.

The jury of seven men and four women deliberated for two hours to return the guilty verdicts.

The couple, of Woodview, Brownstown, Ratoath, Co Meath, have four children and 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.

Overwhelming

Judge McCartan commended Detective Sergeant Declan Daly, who led the investigation, and his garda colleagues on the way they compiled, presented and prepared the evidence, which he described as "frankly overwhelming".

Dominic McGinn, prosecuting, told the jury in closing the case that the "ultimate issue" for it to decide was whether Mrs Massoud had breast cancer, as she claimed.
He suggested that the only surgery that had taken place on Mrs Massoud was the one that created a scar on her left breast and added "that given the stakes were €700,000, she may have been willing to undergo the pain of making such a mark".

Mr McGinn asked the jury to consider DNA evidence that concluded that the tissue sample provided to the Mater Hospital in Mrs Massoud's name for diagnosis could not have come from her but there was a 99.53pc chance it came from her mother.

This amount of tissue was later described by prosecution witness, Professor Michael Kerin, a breast cancer surgeon who has dealt with 150 such operations a year, as equating to half the average sized breast.

Tissue

Dr Mohamed Elsayed Attia, who claimed to be a friend and colleague of the Massouds, said he saw a jar of human tissue in their home a short time after he learned that Gehan's mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

He said he later spoke to a man who worked with the Massouds who described bringing something in a jar from Egypt to Ireland after being requested to do so by Dr Massoud.

Dr Maureen Smith, a DNA expert with the Department of Justice, told Mr McGinn during the trial that a DNA profile taken from a sample of Mrs Massoud's blood did not match that of a tissue sample provided to the Mater Hospital for diagnosis.

She also said that there was a 99.53pc chance that the tissue donor was Mrs Massoud's mother. But Dr Massoud broke down in tears when he said in evidence that "he would never forget" the day his wife discovered the lump in her breast while she was taking a shower as they was going out to celebrate her birthday in September 2001.

Mammogram

Dr Massoud said that the mammogram his wife had taken a month after her surgery would not have shown the location of the operation he performed on her because the "surgical field was outside the field of the mammogram".

Dr Massoud said he felt that he was the best surgeon to operate on his wife and he didn't want her to be exposed to anything other than perfection.

And Dr Massoud claimed there were many differences between his wife's pathology report and that of her mother's, which he had sent over to Ireland from Egypt.

Dr Massoud described Dr Attia as "a clever illusionist" who had contacted the insurance companies "with this made-up story" using some facts to give weight to "the illusion".