Doctor in Fertility Scandal Spared Jail
Dr. Sergio C. Stone, convicted of insurance fraud in connection with UC Irvine’s fertility clinic scandal, was spared jail time and sentenced Monday to three years of probation.
Stone, 56, must serve one year in a home detention program. He also must pay $50,000 in fines and more than $14,000 in restitution.
“The sentence in this case has nothing to do with the eggs scandal,” U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor said, referring to the national scandal in which human eggs were stolen from women undergoing fertility treatment, then implanted in other women without the donors’ permission.
“The government has shown no evidence to tie Dr. Stone to the eggs scandal,” Taylor said.
UC Irvine officials have accused Stone, along with Drs. Ricardo H. Asch and Jose P. Balmaceda, of stealing eggs and embryos from at least 70 women who were patients at the university’s now defunct Center for Reproductive Health and transplanting them into other women or shipping them to other medical laboratories without the donors’ permission.
When the scandal broke in 1994, prosecutors could not press charges against the doctors in connection with the egg-swapping scheme because there was no law prohibiting the practice.
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