NYS failed to discipline dozens of Long Island doctors for months or years after misconduct

Law enforcement arrested Dr. Frank Pollaro in January 2024 after seizing his laptop with thousands of images and videos of children as young as 4 years old being sexually abused by adults.

It wasn’t the first time.

Federal agents caught the Babylon cardiologist with similar child sexual abuse material in 2009, and he pleaded guilty. But the New York State Health Department’s physician discipline board allowed him to continue practicing for 15 years after that first arrest.

Pollaro is one of 46 doctors on Long Island who held New York medical licenses without restrictions or penalties for months or years despite criminal convictions, felony arrests, civil judgments, other states’ disciplinary actions, bans on treating Medicaid patients, legal settlements that involved fines  or sexual abuse allegations, a Newsday investigation found.

New York’s disciplinary system allowed the physicians to practice freely after they were found guilty or liable or settled claims for a variety of offenses. Those include illegally distributing opioids, fabricating patient records and billing patients for unnecessary, sometimes painful tests. Multiple doctors allegedly billed Medicaid or Medicare for more than 24 hours of appointments in a single day. Another pleaded guilty to receiving tickets to Katy Perry and Justin Bieber concerts and Mets games as kickbacks in exchange for steering blood samples to a preferred laboratory. One physician was found with empty alcohol cans in exam rooms, authorities said.

The investigation found the state disciplines fewer doctors than it did a decade ago and has taken a remediation approach over punishment in dealing with wayward physicians. In 24 of the 46 cases, there is no record of action taken against the doctor. In at least nine other cases, the discipline board went against state Health Department staff recommendations to revoke physicians’ licenses for what they called severe misconduct.

New York’s system for disciplining doctors who commit misconduct puts patients in peril, Newsday found after reviewing thousands of pages of records and interviewing more than 90 doctors, state regulators, attorneys, experts and patients.

The state received at least 7,900 complaints a year between 2013 and 2023, but the discipline board took no more than 440 final actions annually, records show.

The number of serious disciplinary actions the state took against physicians plunged even as the number of doctors in New York rose, a Newsday analysis of federal data found. The rate of serious actions fell by half over the decade ending in 2023, from a three-year average of 1.99 per 1,000 doctors to an average of 1.02 per 1,000. Actions defined as serious include revocations, suspensions and restrictions on a doctor’s ability to practice.

Experts say a possible explanation is the state agency that investigates complaints, the Office of Professional Medical Conduct, saw its budget decline over the past 10 years, while the number of physicians increased 22%. There are nearly 16,200 licensed physicians with primary mailing addresses on Long Island alone. 

Dr. Thomas T. Lee, chairman of the state Board for Professional Medical Conduct, which acts on the office’s findings, said it increasingly prefers a nonpunitive approach toward doctors accused of misconduct. He said the system is fair, and each case is unique and “deliberated methodically in accordance with the laws.”

The increasing reliance on education and non-disciplinary warnings, rather than serious sanctions, can be more effective in ensuring physicians follow laws and regulations, Lee said.

“The public benefits from improved physician education and remediation,” he said.

Yet in some cases involving allegations of egregious conduct, the state took no action and, afterward, dozens of patients said they were harmed.

The board should be “protecting the public from incompetent or miscreant physicians,” said Robert E. Oshel, a former associate director for research and disputes for the National Practitioner Data Bank, a federal repository that compiles physician misconduct reports. “As it is now, typically, the benefit of the doubt goes to the physician, so the public is not being protected from the ones that are really causing the problem.”

Perforated colon, wrongly removed kidney

The state has the power to penalize “physicians whose practice of medicine is seriously deficient or who are dishonest or impaired,” the state Health Department says.

Complaints against physicians are filed with and investigated by the health department’s Office of Professional Medical Conduct. If there’s sufficient evidence of misconduct, the case goes to discipline board committees that by law must have two physicians and one nondoctor. 

In a 2-1 vote, both physicians on a three-member committee cleared Dr. Stuart Copperman, then a Merrick pediatrician, in 1987 of allegations he sexually abused patients. It wasn’t until 13 years later that the state revoked his license. The state concluded he had continued to abuse patients during that time. A state civil court judge in 2023 found him liable of sexual abuse against 104 girls and women. Copperman did not defend himself in any of the hearings and the liability judgment against him was by default.

Copperman in the past denied he abused any patient.

In other cases, the board never acted, despite legal judgments that found doctors had violated the law. A federal judge in 2020 concluded Dr. Emmanuel Asare, who has practiced in Roslyn Heights and Manhattan, had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by refusing to treat Mark Milano and two other men because they were HIV-positive or perceived to be. Milano, 69, said it was “disappointing and frustrating” that the board never acted or even posted the judgment on its website, despite him notifying the state of the ruling.

Asare, 65, did not respond to requests for comment.

Some doctors were disciplined in other states, but it took months or years for New York to act. New Jersey’s medical board made Dr. Greg Saggio surrender his license in 2009 after it investigated two of his surgeries — one that led to the unplanned removal of a kidney, records show, and another that led to a perforated colon and permanent colostomy.

New York’s board did not take action against Saggio until 554 days after New Jersey acted, when it barred him from performing surgeries but allowed him to keep his license. He is now a professor at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine in Old Westbury, preparing others to become doctors.

Carol Wilkins, 69, who said she almost died after Saggio perforated her colon and later reached a civil settlement with him, said in an interview she was outraged Saggio is teaching at a medical school.

“He should have lost his license permanently after me,” she said.

On a recent afternoon in her Cape Coral, Florida, front yard, she displayed for Newsday the colostomy bag she has had to wear since Saggio operated on her. The former registered nurse, who can’t be on her feet for long and must lie down regularly, struggles to make ends meet because she has been unable to work since the surgery. Walking and bending over can be painful.

“He destroyed me,” Wilkins said. “I had a normal life and now I don’t.”

Saggio, 58, declined to comment for this story.

Saggio has been a full-time faculty member at the NYIT medical school since 2006, said the school’s dean, Dr. Nicole Wadsworth. He currently is an associate professor there. Elizabeth Sullivan, an NYIT spokeswoman, said in a statement the university “became aware of” Saggio’s disciplinary history and the two surgeries, “but we can’t clearly say when we became aware,” including whether it was before NYIT hired him.

Wadsworth, in a statement, said Saggio only teaches first- and second-year students, primarily as a lecturer, and he is not involved in surgical training.

Wilkins said Saggio was to only remove her gallbladder in the surgery. As a nurse, she realized something was wrong when she wasn’t feeling better the next day. Gangrene had developed in her gut.

Wilkins said while in the hospital, she asked Saggio, “ ‘Did you puncture my bowel?’ He said, ‘No. No way. There’s no chance of that.’ ”

After several days in the hospital, “I said, ‘I’m going to die if I don’t get out of here,’ ” and she transferred herself to another hospital. A surgeon at the other hospital “saved my life” because she was having “multisystem organ failure” due to an infection.

She said the $300,000 legal settlement she accepted cannot come close to making up for the decades of lost income. She said she survives on Social Security. Publicly available documents do not reflect whether Saggio admitted wrongdoing as part of the settlement or disciplinary proceedings.

Wilkins said Saggio should not be teaching students “who are going to go out and do what he’s teaching them to do.”

More than 100 civil lawsuits

Hundreds of men and women have come forward in recent years to accuse two Long Island doctors, Copperman and urologist Dr. Darius Paduch, of sexual abuse.

The civil claims against Copperman, 89, filed under the 2019 Child Victims Act, alleged the abuse began in the early 1960s and continued for nearly 40 years until the state revoked his license.

Jeanna Limmer and her mother reported Copperman to Nassau County police in 1984, after Limmer said she was abused from age 13 to 15, according to police records retained at her family’s Wantagh home. But no criminal charges were filed, police said.

In 1985, Limmer, now Jeanna Salgado, filed a complaint against him with the state Office of Professional Medical Conduct, records show. In 1987, a discipline board committee acquitted Copperman, despite what Salgado said were “very similar stories” she and another girl — whom she had never met — told the board.

Newsday does not publish the names of sexual assault victims without their permission. 

“When I found out that they were going to let him continue practicing, the thing I was most upset about was, I said to my mom, ‘If he’s done this to me, and my friend, and to this other girl, God only knows how many other girls he’s doing this to, and how many more he’s going to do this to,’ ” Salgado, 56, recalled as she sat in her Manhattan apartment. She said she still has flashbacks of Copperman abusing her.

One of the six women who filed complaints in the 2000 revocation case, Beth Maffei, 56, said the board’s 1987 acquittal encouraged Copperman to abuse girls and young women like herself because he thought he could get away with it.

Maffei said it didn’t surprise her that, as Salgado and court documents said, the two physicians on the committee voted to exonerate Copperman and the nondoctor, a minister, voted against him. Doctors want to protect each other, she said.

“I feel they were just looking out for him,” said Maffei, known as Beth Handelman while growing up in Seaford. She spoke recently from the Lake Worth, Florida, house where she lives with her husband, only 16 miles from Copperman’s home in Boca Raton.

Copperman did not respond to multiple requests for comment over the past year, including phone calls and a request for an interview when Newsday traveled to his gated community in Florida. When reached by phone last year, he declined to comment. A current lawyer is not listed for him in court documents.

‘Patients were their last thought’ 

In 2018, a man filed a sexual abuse complaint with the state against Paduch, 57, who at the time was working in Manhattan but moved to a Northwell Health office in Great Neck in 2020, according to Northwell. 

The man’s attorney, Mallory Allen, said he sought Paduch’s help because he was experiencing groin pain. The man alleged in 2006 and 2007, Paduch sexually abused him. Hundreds of other men alleged similar abuse.

The state took no disciplinary action against Paduch until a month after his April 2023 arrest for sexual abuse by federal agents and other law enforcement. In May 2023, state Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald temporarily suspended his license pending further board proceedings. In August 2023, the discipline board issued an order temporarily barring Paduch from practicing medicine. It was technically “non-disciplinary” because the board had not taken a final action.

In May 2024, a federal jury found Paduch guilty of 11 felonies connected to the sexual abuse of five minors and two adults. He agreed to surrender his medical license in December, after he was sentenced to life in prison.

After sentencing, his attorney, Michael Baldassare, filed an appeal and said, “Dr. Paduch maintains his innocence and we hope that he will one day be vindicated.” Reached earlier this year, Baldassare declined further comment.

Allen represents 143 men — including the 2018 complainant — in civil cases against health care systems where Paduch practiced, New Hyde Park-based Northwell and New York-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine in Manhattan. More than 50 clients were abused after the 2018 complaint was filed, she said.

Allen said her client told her the state did not appear to take his complaint seriously, conducting only a brief interview and never informing him of the result.

James O’Connell, 38, of Maspeth, Queens, said Paduch sexually abused him beginning in March 2021, three years after the complaint was filed with the state.

He said if the health department had acted upon the 2018 complaint, he may never have been abused.

“It’s obvious that the patients were their last thought, if you get a complaint like that across your desk and you don’t do anything about it,” he said.

Health department officials declined to comment on the specifics of any investigation. State law prohibits discussing or providing details of an investigation or complaint beyond what is on the state’s physician discipline website, officials said. The website only includes cases that result in formal charges, discipline or orders that are non-disciplinary but can result in what are, in effect, license suspensions. It does not include complaints that do not lead to formal charges or many details of investigations that do lead to charges.

Northwell and Weill Cornell declined to directly respond to the allegations, citing the ongoing litigation. Northwell said in a statement Paduch came to Northwell in 2020 “with a stellar reputation in the field of urology,” and the health system was “appalled by the deeply disturbing allegations.” Weill Cornell said in statements it hired outside attorneys to conduct an investigation and look into additional patient safeguards, and expanded a program for “medical chaperones” to accompany patients to some doctor visits. New York-Presbyterian referred questions to Weill Cornell, stating Paduch was employed by Weill Cornell. 

‘An emergency situation’

It’s unclear how the Office of Professional Medical Conduct became aware of Pollaro, the doctor who has twice pleaded guilty to charges of possessing child sexual abuse images. The office is required to investigate any formal complaint, but it also can launch investigations based on newspaper articles, court cases or other sources, said William Comiskey, a former OPMC supervising attorney.

Newsday reported Pollaro’s first child sexual abuse material arrest in 2009, five years before the discipline board limited his practice to patients 19 and older. He pleaded guilty in 2011. The board suspended Pollaro’s license for three years starting in 2014, but that suspension was stayed, meaning it didn’t go into effect, and he was put on probation for five years.

A 2014 order from the state Board for Professional Medical Conduct detailing terms of Dr. Frank Pollaro’s discipline.

The state could have prevented Pollaro, 56, from practicing, or restricted him to treating only adults, almost immediately after his arrest. The health commissioner, upon the recommendation of the discipline board, has the power to temporarily stop a doctor from practicing in serious cases.

In Pollaro’s case, allowing a doctor who admitted possessing child sexual abuse material to continue practicing, and giving him the right to examine and touch children’s bodies for years, put kids at risk, said Stefan Turkheimer, vice president for public policy for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, which operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

Pollaro’s 2009 arrest should have been “an emergency situation” for the discipline board, he said.

“There’s no reason in my mind the board shouldn’t say, ‘Well, on an interim basis, you can’t be treating children,’ ” Turkheimer said.

Allen Bode, who prosecuted Pollaro in the 2009 federal case, said he would have expected the discipline board to have given Pollaro a more severe penalty, such as stopping him from practicing entirely, especially following Pollaro’s formal sentencing in 2016.

“Consuming child pornography is a very serious crime, and in the federal system, it’s considered a violent felony, because of the damage that’s inflicted on children,”  he said. “I would be surprised that the state licensing board does not have more serious repercussions for a serious felony.”

Bode now works as the chief assistant district attorney for Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney.

Pollaro’s Mineola attorney, James Pascarella, declined to comment on his client’s case.

Although Pollaro pleaded guilty, the judge in the case delayed his sentencing until 2016 to allow him to perform community service for 5 years, instead of imposing a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. Bode said he “objected vehemently” to community service and argued for prison time. But U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Wexler said he hoped Pollaro could be rehabilitated. 

In Pollaro’s most recent criminal case, Suffolk County Court Judge Karen M. Wilutis on Sept. 9 sentenced him to 4 to 8 years in prison. As part of a plea deal, he agreed to surrender his medical license.

After the sentencing, Tierney said it was “inconceivable” that the board let Pollaro keep his license after his federal conviction.

Turkheimer said that after Pollaro pleaded guilty in 2011, the board’s failure to act was “a dereliction of duty.”

“New York clearly needs to get with the program in their physician discipline,” Bode said. “Physicians are in a position of trust. And it’s something that, if you’re abusing that trust, there ought to be consequences.”

If you are a victim of sexual abuse or assault, the National Sexual Assault Hotline offers confidential 24-hour support: 800-656-4673 or chat online at online.rainn.org.

If you want to file a complaint against a physician licensed in New York, go to: https://www.health.ny.gov/professionals/doctors/conduct/file_a_complaint.htm