Stone Keeps License, Needs Life Back Too

Buried on Page 6, the story still caught my eye: the state medical board decided not to revoke Sergio Stone’s license.

It took me back to a lunch last summer when Stone, so low he said he felt “doomed,” gamely insisted that he’d done nothing intentionally wrong.

Sergio Stone--a name forever linked in Orange County medical circles with the egg-theft scandal that rocked the UC Irvine fertility clinic and the school itself in 1995.

The scandal demanded heads on platters. But when Stone’s partners, Ricardo Asch and Jose Balmaceda, left the country after the clinic closed and Stone stayed, his was the only head available.

Stone was never linked to the thefts, but it almost didn’t matter.

One by one, Stone came up against the federal government, the University of California and the Medical Board of California, each of which wanted a piece of him.

After a federal jury convicted him last year of mail fraud in connection with billings unrelated to the egg thefts, Stone said he’d followed UCI policy and that of medical schools around the country.

But because he had signed the billing statements, and the government defined that as fraud, his conviction was preordained.

When we met last summer, Stone was, professionally speaking, a dead man walking.

He’d just been sentenced to a year of home detention. That light sentence from a federal judge not known for leniency suggested to me that, just as Stone said, his “crime” wasn’t as egregious as it sounded.

We didn’t talk again until this week, when I saw the story in the paper. An administrative law judge recommended that Stone not lose his license, as the state of California wanted. The Medical Board of California agreed and gave Stone probation.

Stone’s billing “did not occur in a vacuum,” the law judge wrote. Rather, he wrote, it “took place in an academic milieu” in which it was common practice.

In other words, just what Stone had argued all along.

So here’s my scorecard so far on this man whose livelihood hangs in the balance: two wrist slaps.

I contacted Stone this week in Santiago, Chile, where he’s visiting relatives--thanks to permission from the judge who sentenced him last summer.

“It’s difficult to say I feel vindicated,” he says, “but I do feel that way and I believe I will be completely vindicated when the university will be forced by me, the evidence and the lawyers to take me back.”

Stone’s lawyer, Karen Taillon, says the medical board’s decision was a big victory.

Unlike the federal case, where Stone’s admission to signing the bills sunk him as a matter of law, the law judge heard from other doctors who corroborated Stone’s contention that he didn’t stray from accepted policies.

I don’t know if it’s too late for Stone to regain his reputation. Maybe he’s too tainted by association. Maybe no one cares about the fine print.

One hurdle remains. UCI must decide whether to take him back.

Will the university, understandably eager to denounce the clinic’s actions, continue to make a sacrificial lamb out of the defiant Sergio Stone? UCI says it has separate grievances with Stone, but I wonder.

I wonder just how much of a scoundrel he really is.

From Chile, Stone, now 57, sounded as defiant as he did last summer, but with a twist: He sounded hopeful too.

“I want to be back in my office with my secretary and my computer as a professor of the University of California,” he says. “Because there is no reason to dismiss me.”

If there’s anything more fragrant than the sweet smell of success, it’s the sweet smell of vindication.

For Stone, that scent may be coming in his direction.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.