Capping off a whirlwind romance filled with gondola rides in Venice and quiet dinners in the Greek islands, she was promised a wedding in the Italian countryside officiated by the Pope himself. Why don't you, can you just for once sit back and let somebody else take over, just let him, let him take it over." Um, which is just something I never thought I would do, you know. Then, two years later, her father, whod married a neighbor, asked her to pack up her bags and leave for good. In her personal life, she's also looking for a medical miracle, a miracle that, well it wasn't going to come. Who lost her dad. Gerdin also said Macchiarini had failed to obtain ethical permits to perform the transplants, which he said amounted to experimentation on human subjects. But everything else, I'm planning everything, and you can't ask me any questions.". "The outcry was such that the Karolinska Institute had to do something," said Ritchie. [00:08:14] Benita: But we, we started looking into him, and then he was about to do a transplant on this beautiful, beautiful little toddler, um, her name was Hannah, from Seoul, South Korea. In mid-2013, they became a couple and in December that year they became pre-engaged as Macchiarini, who lived in Barcelona, Spain, said he was still legally married with two children but had been separated for a long time and was filing for divorce. [00:21:08] Bob: Benita is proud of her work and happy with her husband-to-be, excited to put the finishing touches on Hannah's medical miracle story, but before the piece airs, the story takes a dark turn. ", Alexander, who waited in the car, said that the last time she saw Macchiarini, he had turned around and walked back up the stairs. And it's a beautiful building, and it just has this feeling about it, you know, as you, it's a very special feeling too. Macchiarini has not yet entered a plea, but has denied all of the charges. And I was ready to ride off into the sunset, into this new life in Barcelona, and but it was also a very, very difficult decision for me. And I had seen paperwork that he had done work at the Vatican, consulting work. And he was putting artificial tracheas, the windpipe, into patients. Sought after worldwide, people believed Macchiarini would one day revolutionize the field of organ transplantation, journalist Bo Lindquist said. I loved my life at NBC. The Love Con: Directed by Star Price. It was, it was really, really difficult. You know, part of it is you meet so many different people that you would never meet otherwise, but when you can tell a story that actually makes a difference in someone's life, that, to me, that's one of the most beautiful things about journalism. And the two go on a magic carpet ride together. Benita graduated magna cum laude from Wayne State University in Michigan, with a B.A in journalism. [00:30:37] Bob: So now that she's been told the Pope is involved, Benita has another secret to keep. I mean most 8-year-olds will change their minds, you know, many times, but I never changed. Benita Alexander, and swept her off her feet with a marriage proposal and promises of a wedding . So it was uh, quite, quite in--, incredible or remarkable to, for those words to come out of her mouth. [00:36:55] Bob: Benita, the TV producer, is very used to managing all the details of a big event. TV & Film Producer, Director, Writer, Correspondent, Narrator. You will be asked to register or log in. I found him very um, hmm, he had a presence about him. Benita Alexander's documentary chronicles her fairytale romance with a celebrity surgeon that turned into a scam. Paolo showers Benita with affection. Six years later, in 2009, they filed for divorce. This very personal film, which Benita narrates herself, documents how her fairytale romance with a world-renowned surgeon turns into a nightmare. [00:25:28] Bo Lindquist: He was definitely prone to getting angry and, and could be quite violently. Benita Alexander is a producer, director, writer, and narrator, who has actually been behind several episodes of IDs Now, Dateline, and even Inside the Obama White House. It thus comes as no surprise that her professional success has given way to her confidence. To see all content on The Sun, please use the Site Map. He told her opera singer Andrea Bocelli would be singing in the church during their wedding and that John Legend would be playing the piano at their ceremony. He's also never spoken publicly about his relationship with Alexander. She said that in November 2014, they had planned a trip to California to spend Thanksgiving with her family, "and he had been really stressed in the weeks before, and he had been talking to me for some time about how there were people that were against him, and his 'enemies.'". Alexander, an award-winning documentary TV producer, met Macchiarini in 2013 while working on a story about the surgeon's pioneering work transplanting synthetic tracheas, or windpipes. Instead, he says their underlying health conditions were fatal and may have been a factor in their deaths. The couple shares a daughter named Jessina, born in 2003. Of course, it's Valentine's Day, I'm like, oh my God. We just made sure we took care of Benita. It just never stopped, to the point that I would come home from these trips, and all my friends were hanging on the edge of their seat. It's a very aggressive form of brain cancer. He soon proposed, only for her to realize her fianc was a complete liar around a year later. She couldn't run around and play. [00:36:07] Matthew Christopher: Confident, rico-suave, I am Paolo, ha-ha, and I'm like, okay, you know, I'm like am I nervous? Benita Alexander-Jeune started her career as a journalist for a few minor television stations. I mean it was crazy. She was floored when he told her John Legend would sing at their wedding and Pope Francis would officiate. However, while filming with Macchiarini, Alexander's ex-husband, the father of her young daughter, had been diagnosed with brain cancer. [00:19:03] Benita: (laugh) Yeah, yep, yeah. Um, maybe I felt like that at some point when I was really young and I had a, had a crush in school, I don't know, but I don't, I don't ever remember feeling like that. A successful TV journalist, the single mother-of-one was interviewing him for a report on cutting-edge medicine. Macchiarini did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News. Benita has since spoken up about her experiences in the media, given public speeches, and written detailed articles in renowned publications to bring awareness to the concept of love con. If I had a checklist, he, he was everything I would want in a partner, everything you would want in a man. She is an executive producer, narrator, writer and director known for her work in the true crime genre. www.aarp.org/volunteer. With a purported VIP list of friends and clients that included former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Russian president Vladimir Putin and entertainment icons such as Elton John, their wedding was expected to be one of the biggest events of the year. [00:17:35] Benita: Around this time that my ex-husband, John, passed away, we became romantically involved. And I tend to be a very empathetic kind of person, and I am very sensitive, and I care a lot about people and so I've always used that in journalism to really sort of get inside somebody else's shoes or, or their story. So he was very interesting and very fascinating and also because he was a pioneer, and he was pushing the envelope, you know, he was a little bit, a little bit radical, but doing, he was taking chances that nobody else would, and we actually need people like that in medicine. Benita Alexander has been working as a Macchiarini at NBC News. related to AARP volunteering. You know this man adores you. Alexander was assigned to work on the documentary about Paolo Macchiarini who has considered a pioneer in organ transplant. But then I, and this was October of 2014, and I went and googled, the first thing I did was I went to my desk and googled, literally googled, Does the Pope marry people? And what popped up was an article from a month earlier where the Pope had just married 20 couples in the Vatican. "I wanted to get all the information that I could before I really confronted him.". I mean I'm going to achieve this; you know what I mean? [00:00:01] Bob: This week on The Perfect Scam. That hideous under eye makeup , the obvious heavy Botox , that absurd VERY heavy makeup AND that over-dyed silly black hair says it all. [00:31:37] Bob: Matthew is no stranger to dressing important people at important times. [00:04:24] Benita: Right, yeah, and they're not always happy endings, and you do, you, unfortunately, you know, you report on a lot of very, very difficult things in news. Macchiarini had been credited with developing innovative surgical techniques using stem cells in synthetic trachea transplants. Three months later, the Karolinska Institute ruled that while Macchiarini did not always rise to the level of its standards, he had not committed scientific misconduct. You are leaving AARP.org and going to the website of our trusted provider. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. 5. He was kind of a rebel. And this is something very clandestine and secretive and he cant talk about, but hes been doing this for many years, and he is a celebrity surgeon to a number of famous people and celebrities, but that he cant talk about this because hes tied to people who want a private doctor who will attend to them but, you know, they have these private doctors, because they don't want anyone to know, you know, whats going on in their private life. She was 100% Daddy's Little Girl, and he utterly adored her. ET on ABC. Corbascio called the decision "absolutely insane.". The procedure uses the framework of a plastic tube lined with the patient's stem cells and is intended to help them replicate into a healthy version of the failing organ. [00:04:33] Bob: But it also sounds like you get pretty, your stories are very emotional, and you get pretty involved in your subjects, right. I, my friends sort of joke now that, you know, I was blushing all the time, and I was just giddy. [00:12:41] Bob: And you went forward with that weekend pushing the feeling aside, right? Nothing anybody could do for her, and then like so many of Dr. Paolo Macchiarini's patients, they did a google search and found this kind of a magician of a surgeon who said I can help your little girl. Track SoCal rain with LIVE Megadoppler 7000 HD, Emily Whipp, Laura Dimon, Colleen Halpin, Emma Piscia and Anthony Rivas. The story with making a couture gown is, you know, it goes through, gosh, a team of pattern makers, drapers, um, stitchers, sewers, hand stitchers, beading and embroiderers, lace, and all that kind of stuff. Benita Alexander, an award-winning documentary TV producer and Paolo Macchiarini fall in love after meeting in 2013 while she is working on a story about the surgeon's pioneering w Show more. She was devasted to learn all the lies told by Macchiarini. Death." Its so damaging. The scale . And after he left, I said to my parents, that's what I'm going to do when I grow up. And I think I was even blushing. [00:01:59] Benita: I had worked my way up from working in, from tiny little newspapers in Detroit, Michigan, which is where I went to college and where I'd, my family had moved after Australia. Every time he took me on a trip, he just delighted in these, these big, over the top, elaborate surprises. ", Jupiter and Venus appear to 'kiss' in the sky, What is graupel? I loved my work at NBC. Previously considered a pioneer for using both biological and synthetic scaffolds seeded with patients' own stem cells as trachea . During her investigation into Macchiarini, Alexander hired private investigators in the U.S. and Italy. Copyright 2023 ABC News Internet Ventures. He's Catholic. And Hillary Clinton got involved, different people in Congress got involved, but ultimately, after many trips back and forth to Brazil and a lot of emotion, he got his son home. They become engaged and plan a lavish dream wedding, to be attended by celebrities and officiated by none other than Pope Francis himself. He speaks 5 or 6 languages, and he works all over the world, and you know, dresses very beautifully. Season 1 (206) 2018 13+ He Lied About Everything is the true tale of the love affair between award-winning investigative producer Benita Alexander, and world-renowned surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. receive communications related to AARP volunteering. "I made a very strategic decision to start playing a cat-and-mouse game, basically," she said. And I was raised Episcopalian, but I said, "I know, I know enough about the Catholic religion to know that no priest is going to marry two divorcees," and he, he, you know, he said, "Don't worry. Just like, oh, the dance dress was crazy. Emmy Award Winning . In a 500-page complaint filed in 2014 that detailed their allegations, the doctors accused Macchiarini of promoting a medical procedure that showed few signs of success while endangering the lives of his patients. And it's Paolo who helps Benita figure out the best way to say goodbye. Benita Alexander thought she had found her modern day Prince Charming. So it was scary. My then ex-husband, who I had moved to New York with and the father of our beautiful daughter, was dying of brain cancer. It has led to extensive reform work internally at KI in order to improve and clarify a number of regulations and routines.". And he had been fighting with her in the courts in Brazil over this, and then she passed away, unfortunately. I had to understand what happened and why. It's, it's a very um, it has a lot of stature, that building and a lot of meaning. And I just thought, okay, you've got some stupid little schoolgirl crush on this doctor, which is absurd. The way he used stem cells with his plastic tracheas would eventually develop into something quite extraordinary where you could use stem cells to target organs or other areas of the body where the, where there was a medical problem. A love story gone bad for Benita Alexander, an award-winning documentary television producer and Paolo Macchiarini, an internationally renowned surgeon. Anyone that knows anything about private schools in New York knows how hard that is. She is honestly proud of how far she has come (as she should be), and its evident shell never let anything or anyone take this journey/narrative away from her. In 2013, she was featured in the NBC documentary "A Leap of Faith." She has won numerous awards for her work. Benita Alexander, an award-winning documentary TV producer and Paolo Macchiarini fall in love after meeting in 2013 while she is working on a story about the. "That wasn't true. So I just found him very, I don't want to say intimidating, because intimidating's not the word. Hundreds of Benita Alexander's friends and family had already bought their plane tickets to Italy to attend her extravagant wedding that was supposed to be officiated by the pope when it all came crashing down in a flurry of her fianc's deception. In the most recent development, she narrated her story on ABC's The Con, so that more people can be made aware of such practices. [00:25:58] Bo Lindquist: I think he liked the challenge. He was giving people who had no other hope. "I couldn't fall apart because I am a single mother with a daughter who needs me. The slip from "Prince Charming to pathological liar" took place over just two years, she said. [00:23:44] Bo Lindquist: Paolo was very well-dressed and very careful with his looks. Moreover, the Italian investigator found records showing that despite planning a wedding with Alexander for so long, Macchiarini was still legally married. It defeats the point, Benita recently said. None of the promises Alexander said her fianc Paolo Macchiarini had made for their wedding day would come true. He is Italian. "I talked to my editors and we started thinking, 'Well, let's just keep pulling on this thread. Both have covered Macchiarini in their work. While still trying to care for Cetir, Corbascio said his team found that Macchiarini had exaggerated the effectiveness of his surgeries and falsified data to make the surgeries seem more successful than they were. [00:15:45] Benita: There was a particular moment when my ex-husband had gone into a coma, and I was in Illinois, and I was, I was um, very upset about everything and trying to figure out a way, I was talking to Paolo about trying to figure out what to do and how to say goodbye, and uh crying about the fact that I hadn't been able to say goodbye. So this is not really out of the realm of possibility that he would have contacts at the Vatican. She found out exactly what hed lied about - and she said it was extensive. [00:36:44] Bob: I feel like there's some people you meet who are simultaneously uh impressive but uncomfortable. The article's author, journalist Adam Ciralsky, had also uncovered fabrications in Macchiarini's professional life, and he documented a number of examples of Macchiarini misrepresenting his medical training and work history. Benita was pursuing a big story when the ill-fated lovers met in 2013. And he's Italian, and he wanted this big Catholic wedding in Italy. 5 Journalist Benita Alexander (right) has revealed chilling clues that disclosed her lover and famed surgeon Paolo Macchiarini as a "romance scammer" Credit: Instagram / loveconned 5 One of the reasons I am so adamant about continuing to talk about this is because I think victim-shaming is terrible. When Benita Alexander eventually realized her whole relationship with Dr. Paolo Macchiarini was nothing short of a scam, she decided she wanted the world to know the truth about him. Lindquist's three-part documentary series "The Experiments" began airing just over a week after the damning Vanity Fair article was published in early January 2016. He was put on trial after his patients reportedly suffered bodily harm during his experimental surgeries but he always denied any criminal wrongdoing. "As furious as it makes me what he did [to me and] my daughter, the thought that this is a man who has people's lives in his hands. She said she'd never fantasized about a "Prince Charming." [00:34:26] Matthew Christopher: You put your, I am going to make the most gorgeous dress you've ever seen. Hosted by Benita Alexander. The Karolinska Institute commissioned an external investigation into the allegations. I didn't, you know, how do you, how do you not ask any questions, but all my friends convinced me, they said, "You know, Benita, you know he has amazing taste. ", "As devastated as I was and as much as I wanted to crawl under the covers and hide and stay there, I knew I couldn't fall apart," she said. Which clearly would completely change the face of, of medicine and, you know, all these people that been told they have no hope or no chance, it, it would be, it would be a gamechanger, right. [00:40:30] Benita: Paolo lived in Barcelona, and so we had talked about what were we going to do after the wedding. "He seemed like he was the miracle man," she said. The first meeting between Benita Alexander, an award-winning producer for NBC News, and Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, the famous transplant surgeon, took place at the bar at Bostons Mandarin Oriental hotel. [00:17:51] Bob: Their relationship blossoms quickly. And we first met in early 2013. The Korean girl that had undergone Macchiarini's procedure in Illinois, whose story Alexander had been sent to cover, had died in the time following the surgery. I was torn up about it, and my last day at NBC was in May of 2015. A contact she had to the Clintons told her they'd never heard of Macchiarini. 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Then, one morning, she read in The New York Times that Macchiarini's colleagues at the Karolinska Institute had accused him of scientific misconduct and filed a complaint with the university. In 2019, she produced the Oxygen doc Seduced By Evil, which chronicles another con-man, Derek Alldred. NEW YORK Dr Paolo Macchiarini, He Lied About Everything with Benita Alexander Armchair MBA 18K subscribers Join Subscribe 1.5K Share Save 128K views 2 years ago I chat with Benita Alexander. [00:31:07] Bob: But what is a couture wedding gown designer? And so we were looking into this field, and we found this doctor. Famous For Being an American actress and producer. A post shared by Benita Alexander (@loveconned). Thank you to our team of scambusters; Executive Producer, Julie Getz; Researcher, Haley Nelson; Associate Producer, Annalea Embree; and of course, our Audio Engineer, Julio Gonzalez. But when it comes to the wedding, Paolo takes the lead. Paolo Macchiarini proposes to Benita Alexander before leaving US for work: Part 2Alexander seemed to be living a fantasy lifestyle. Because the, in itself, more gowns were added into the wedding. He also directed ABC News to a list of reforms the Institute was implementing in the wake of the scandal. "He comes around the corner, he looks right at me and in that second something happened. [00:14:35] Benita: The thing about Paolo is he's a very good listener, and we, after a shoot sometimes, would go out to dinner, or we would be in a group of people talking. I mean it got to the point where he loved to surprise me, everywhere we went. [00:34:17] Bob: Well, at some point you transition from wow to okay, I've got to get to work on this, right? Um, and so he had, we were coming back into the room after dinner one night, and I was kind of teasing him. Lindquist had begun his own investigation into the claims brought forth by Macchiarini's colleagues. He is one of the world's leading cardio thoracic surgeons. [00:34:59] Bob: When you went to her house, was Paolo there? [00:39:32] Bob: And as the day approaches, Benita gets to try on that custom-made wedding dress. [00:23:20] Bob: Bo also spent many months following Paolo around the world, getting to know him, getting Paolo to open up to him. As Alexander began to unravel the web of lies Macchiarini had told her, she began to wonder if the world-renowned thoracic surgeon had also misled people in his professional life. He seemed that way in his work as well, but here he is talking to me and spending all this time listening to me and seemed very vested in this little girl that he had never met. So just under two months before the wedding, and it was just difficult. After doing some digging, it transpired that Macchiarini was not the medical genius she thought he was. Paolo Macchiarini (born 22 August 1958): 2 is a Swiss-born Italian thoracic surgeon and former regenerative medicine researcher who became known for research fraud and manipulative behavior. Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. But Bo at the time had no idea who it was. Reality struck Alexander's fantasy romance eight weeks before she was supposed to marry Macchiarini in 2015, when she received an email from a colleague with the subject line saying, "The Pope.". He's also had his artificial trachea removed. That's pretty unusual too. Yeah. This was worldwide. "When I started reading specifically the papers that Paolo himself had written, then we could quite quickly come to the conclusion that what was written in the papers was not what was going on in reality," Corbascio said. In fact, the scientist was embroiled in lawsuits and accusations at work. [00:22:38] Bob: What Benita doesn't know at the time, she couldn't have known, is that Hannah's death also sparks the interest of the European journalist named Bo Lindquist, a Swedish filmmaker, he's already working on a documentary film about Paolo, but it isn't designed with a happy ending in mind. I want to focus on work. We have somebody who has been brave enough to share something thats already humiliating and devastating. Star-Studded Wedding Becomes Brides Worst Nightmare, Part 1, Journalist exposes her celebrity fianc, part 2, Computer hacker drains couple's life savings. Macchiarini had told her that he and his wife were separated, but that the divorce hadn't yet been finalized legally. Her mother was Korean, and her dad, Canadian. His work, if controversial, is also groundbreaking. Benita is the Executive Producer of the documentary film, He Lied About Everything, which premiered in the U.S. in 2018 on Investigation Discovery, and continues to be broadcast around the world. [00:30:47] Benita: It was all very hush-hush, you know, everybody that was involved in the wedding planning, including the people that designed the wedding invitations, the people that made my wedding dresses, everybody had to just, had to sign nondisclosure agreements. I couldn't fall apart because if he's lying to me like this, there's no way he's not lying in his medical and professional life.". And so I did, you know, I sat back, and even when I was tempted to ask questions, I didn't. Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. They make it for you in the lab, right. [00:35:53] Bob: And while the dresses are being made, while the other wedding preparations are underway, Matthew meets Paolo. Alexander was in head over heels for Macchiarini. "I was doing a story about regenerative medicine and his name kept coming up," Benita, a New York resident, said on the podcast Dr Death: Miracle Man. She had spent her entire little life in the hospital, never left the hospital because she had a tube down her throat just to live. As these events were unfolding, Maccharini allowed Lindquist to follow him for a documentary film. [00:31:32] Bob: I mean that sounds like a very special process. And I also had my beard uh, uh, cut there. Meanwhile, the doctors were still trying to save Cetir's life. She is also the CEO of Berraca Productions, a company she founded to further her advocacy work empowering women who are the survivors of fraud.

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