Ex-UCI Fertility Doctor Sentenced in Fraud Case

Dr. Sergio C. Stone, one of three physicians at the center of the 1994 UC Irvine fertility scandal, has been put on three years’ professional probation for insurance fraud, state officials said Wednesday.

The Medical Board of California also revoked Stone’s license to practice medicine but immediately stayed the revocation.

“It’s basically something that hangs over his head,” said Sanford Feldman, a state deputy attorney general who helped prosecute the case. “If he violates probation we can ask the court . . . to revoke his license.”

Under terms of his probation, Stone will be allowed to practice medicine but must enroll in a course on ethics, have his work monitored by another physician, report his whereabouts to the medical board at all times and reimburse the state for about $7,000 in expenses.

Stone, 56, became embroiled in a national scandal when it was revealed that eggs at UCI’s Center for Reproductive Health, which he helped run, had been taken from women undergoing fertility treatment, then implanted in other women without the donors’ permission. Two other physicians involved in the scandal--Ricardo H. Asch and Jose P. Balmaceda--later fled abroad to avoid prosecution. The UCI center was closed in 1995.

Stone remained in Southern California, however, and last year was convicted of insurance fraud for writing reports suggesting that assistant surgeons were present during surgeries attended only by himself, and for charging insurance companies for work that he said was done by his partners but in fact was done by medical residents.

As a result of the conviction, he was fined $50,000 and ordered to serve one year of home detention.

Authorities have emphasized that the fraud charges were not directly related to the fertility scandal and that there was no evidence linking Stone to the theft of the eggs.

The doctor’s conduct, the medical board’s recent decision stated, “did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it took place in an academic milieu in which a practice developed to obtain reimbursement for services performed by residents and interns.”

Because the insurance practices have now been found to be illegal, the report went on to say, they are unlikely to be repeated. Stone, according to the report, “has learned some lessons as a result of his conviction and its attendant embarrassment. He vows to prepare future operating reports accurately regardless of medical center practice or policy.”