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A Melbourne man who pretended to be a gynaecologist for 10 years using forged medical qualifications from Italy is being sentenced in a Victorian County Court.
Raffaele Di Paolo, 61, has pleaded guilty or been found guilty on charges of procuring sexual penetration by fraud, indecent assault, common assault, obtaining property by deception and attempting to obtain property by deception.
In his sentencing, Judge Bill Stuart said Di Paolo gave injections, took blood samples and performed internal ultrasounds on his female patients in Brighton and at an office on St Kilda Rd, reports The Australian.
Between 2005 and 2015, Di Paolo scammed 30 women and their partners who were desperate for children. As he was giving the couples false hopes of a pregnancy, Di Paolo was conning them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Judge Stuart blasted the fake doctor’s “profound” capacity for deception and slammed the maximum five-year imprisonment penalty for procuring sexual penetration by fraud.
“It is plain to me that the maximum penalty is wholly inadequate, as revealed by this case of your offending in this is, and ought, in my view, be revisited by parliament,” said Judge Stuart.
When talking about Di Paolo’s treatment of a couple that saw him for four years, Judge Stuart described his actions as “gross” and “brutal.”
The husband suffers a congenital form of vasectomy, which requires sperm to be removed with a needle from the testes – a procedure Di Paolo performed without anesthetic, claiming it would increase the chance of viable sperm.
“It was an excruciating pain,” said Judge Stuart, who is expected to hand down Di Paolo’s punishment today.
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