Immunity deal keeps Venger safe from prison, but it can’t save his reputation

From the way he carved up prosecution witness Dr. Ben Venger in the medical fraud trial of Noel Gage, it’s clear Pitaro would have made a terrible mess of his patients. They surely would have lost arms, legs, and a lot of blood.

Brain surgeon Venger spilled his guts Monday, and Pitaro made sure the government’s key insider kept leaking throughout a lengthy and painful cross-examination.

Venger, who has spent his professional life building an excellent reputation in the community, was sliced like fish bait by Pitaro, who surely challenged a federal court record for the most times calling a witness a liar. I’ve seen turkey carcasses five days after Christmas with more vital signs.

At some point I almost expected Senior U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush to pull out a stethoscope and pronounce the witness lifeless for the purposes of further use in a trial that finds attorney Gage accused of conspiring to defraud clients in medical malpractice cases and launder a percentage of the proceeds to admitted professional liars such as Venger.

That’s not to say Gage is off the hook. Jurors may rightly have been impressed by Venger’s testimony that, during a confidential meeting in a suite at the J.W. Marriott with self-styled medical consultant Howard Awand — one the surgeon admits he attended in furtherance of a fraud scheme — he swears he clearly heard Gage’s voice giving Awand instructions via the cell phone.

Beyond that, Venger’s repeated statements that he’d only carried out Awand’s instructions and clearly understood those marching orders were coming from Gage were drowned out by his reluctant admissions that he’d changed his story, repeatedly lied, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting and professional witness fees, and had essentially laundered the proceeds.

Even Venger’s emphatic testimony that he’d had a change of heart after Sept. 30, 2003, was made to sound like a kid with a kazoo after Pitaro established that the supposedly offended doctor had continued working with patients directly linked to Awand two years later. The employees of Gage and Awand might have offended Venger’s wife, but he kept in touch with the source of so much business.

“After that date I never saw Howard Awand again,” Venger said.

No, but he did accept several referrals from the medical middleman.

Pitaro also established that prior to Venger’s immunity deal the surgeon was at least briefly concerned about being prosecuted for obstruction of justice after he failed to list all the cash he’d received from Awand. Considering all the money Venger received and the several ways he sought to conceal its source, it’s understandable how he might have lost track.

While Venger’s reputation is in sore need of a transfusion, thanks to an immunity deal with the government and an agreement to forfeit a bundle of money in the form of restitution, his courthouse hara-kiri is over for now. (Awand has yet to come to trial, and Venger and surgeon John Thalgott might be compelled to make repeat performances.)

Whether Gage escapes a conviction is uncertain. Some jurors might make the connection that the veteran attorney reasonably should have known about the shenanigans going on in his own camp. The defense’s attempt at building a wall of plausible deniability seems almost corny given Gage’s own reputation as a hard-nosed, detail-oriented trial lawyer.

One thing is clear, Gage is most fortunate that Awand didn’t stand trial first. For as flawed as witness physicians Venger and Thalgott might have been, in my ears their testimony implicating Awand sounded absolutely believable. Awand has real problems, and that could mean trouble for other lawyers and physicians.

Venger appeared genuinely emotionally pole-axed by this experience — and not just because he was caught storytelling and trying to save what remained of his skin after Pitaro’s Ginsu knife demonstration. Unlike Thalgott, who was such a professional witness that I wondered whether he cared even the slightest amount that he’d been caught in the middle of a fraud case, Venger appeared absolutely distraught by this debacle.

With Monday’s courtroom bloodletting eventually stanched, Venger now faces another question:

You can return the dirty money and avoid prison, but where do you go for a reputation transplant?

John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295.