The third of three San Clemente physicians swept up in a fraud case has had his license to practice medicine in California placed on probation.
Dr. John Frederick Gentile’s five-year probation order went into effect on Friday, according to the Medical Board of California.
The San Juan Capistrano resident and Drs. Eva M. Gentile and David Ray Zachary each pleaded guilty in Orange County Superior Court in 2015 to misdemeanor aiding and abetting the unauthorized practice of medicine. As part of their plea deals, multiple counts of felony conspiracy, medical fraud and sentencing enhancements were dismissed.
Gentile received fines, three years probation and was ordered to pay victim restitution and volunteer 160 hours of free medical care.
His guilty plea placed him in violation of the state Medical Practice Act and demonstrated “general unprofessional conduct,” according to medical board investigators.
Because Zachary and Eva Gentile were originally slapped with two special allegations that John Gentile did not face—aggravated white collar crime over $100,000 and property damage/loss over $65,000—their medical licenses received two more years of probation than John Gentile’s did.
Conditions of John Gentile’s probation include performing 200 hours of free community service, enrollment in an ethics course and having his office billing monitored by a third party that will report to the board. He is also prohibited from hiring or working with any aestheticians, he can’t supervise physician assistants or advanced practice nurses, and he must inform any hospital or facility where he has privileges of his probation status.
Failure to follow any of those conditions could lead to medical license revocation procedures, as per the agreement Gentile and his lawyer Kevin E. Gallagher signed on May 10.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.