By SERGE F. KOVALESKI
Published: July 24, 2011
Anthony Galea, a Canadian doctor with a burgeoning client list of star American athletes, and Mary Anne Catalano, his loyal assistant, had their assigned roles.
Dr. Anthony Galea pleaded guilty this month to bringing misbranded and unapproved drugs into the United States.
Catalano would drive across the United States border, a stash of human growth hormone and other drugs and medical supplies in her car. Galea, not licensed to practice medicine in the United States, would treat his injured athletes — Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez and the Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, among others — in hotel rooms or their homes.
But before Galea would meet with the athletes, Catalano would pack his medical kit, complete with the drugs involved in that session’s treatment.
“When they took trips to the United States, Ms. Catalano would prepare Dr. Galea’s bag for each visit with an athlete,” Calvin Barry, a lawyer for Catalano, said recently. “She was his full-fledged assistant.”
Now, Catalano, 33, who first worked for Galea when she was 15, will be sentenced Monday in United States District Court in Buffalo. She began cooperating with federal investigators — United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Food and Drug Administration and the F.B.I. — right after being detained at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo on Sept. 14, 2009. Catalano had been driving to Washington with unlawful medical goods in a duffel bag to meet Galea to treat an athlete there.
There is little doubt that the help Catalano has provided to the United States government was instrumental in getting Galea, 51, to plead guilty on July 6 to a felony charge of bringing misbranded and unapproved drugs into the United States. Galea, a father of seven children who has used H.G.H. on himself and who has his practice at the Institute of Sports Medicine Health and Wellness Center in Etobicoke, Ontario, is scheduled to be sentenced in October.
The trove of detailed patient information that Catalano has been privy to should, then, help authorities determine which professional athletes received what drugs and treatments from Galea, and whether those athletes have been truthful with federal investigators over the nearly two years of their inquiry.
Galea’s Denial
Galea has maintained that while he has treated some of his patients with H.G.H., he never used performance-enhancing drugs on the professional athletes who had enlisted him to help them recover from injuries.
Federal prosecutors have made it clear that they want Galea to be more forthcoming. Indeed, following Galea’s plea, prosecutors said that he would be required to cooperate with the government until his sentencing. What they expect from him are details about his treatment of specific athletes in the United States, information that prosecutors say could result in charges against athletes who may have lied to federal investigators or a grand jury.
Galea, who made dozens of trips to the United States from 2007 through September 2009 to care for prominent athletes with a variety of blood treatments, faces a maximum of three years in prison, but he could get significantly less depending on his level of cooperation and other factors.
As a result of Catalano’s help, prosecutors, in court papers this month, asked United States District Judge Richard Arcara to give Catalano only probation and no time behind bars. In June 2010, Catalano pleaded guilty to a felony charge of making false statements to federal officers at the Peace Bridge and faces a potential sentencing range of six to 12 months in prison.
“The cooperation of Mary Anne Catalano was a significant and substantial factor in obtaining a felony conviction against Dr. Anthony Galea,” Assistant United States Attorney Paul Campana wrote in his motion.
Campana also noted that “due in large part to Ms. Catalano’s continued cooperation,” a federal grand jury returned a five-count indictment last October, charging Galea with conspiracy, smuggling, two offenses relating to drugs that were misbranded and unapproved and aiding and assisting in the making of false statements to federal officers.
Per her arrangement with Galea, Catalano initially misled border authorities by telling them she was heading to Washington to attend a medical conference with her boss. She told them she was taking Galea’s medical equipment because he did not have time to pack it before leaving Canada. After further questioning, she conceded that her story was not true.
A person briefed on the case said that while Catalano was being detained at the border, Galea was sending her text messages on her cellphone urging her “to perpetuate the deception.” The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because much of the information from the investigation remains confidential.
Athletes Hold Firm
Since Galea’s arrest, representatives of Woods have said he never received performance-enhancing drugs during the treatments he received from Galea, efforts that were meant to speed his recovery from a knee injury. Rodriguez, the third baseman for the Yankees, has told Major League Baseball’s investigators that he did not receive performance-enhancing drugs, either.
Lawyers for Galea and Catalano, for their part, have gone to lengths in the aftermath of Galea’s plea to assert publicly that Woods indeed never received H.G.H. from the doctor.
Asked a week later whether he could also provide details of Galea’s treatment of Rodriguez, the doctor’s Canadian lawyer, Brian Greenspan, said via an e-mail that he could not comment because of “the privacy interests of patients and physician-patient confidentiality.”
Greenspan, who declined to be interviewed, further wrote that he addressed Woods’s situation publicly because Woods’s name had come up during Galea’s plea hearing in court, and he was asked specifically about the golfer afterward by reporters. He would not say, though, whether he had needed or received Woods’s permission to publicly discuss aspects of the golfer’s treatment by Galea.
Catalano, who has worked as an administrative assistant for a different doctor in Toronto since November 2010, was originally accused of smuggling illegal substances across the border from Canada into the United States. Last summer, in exchange for her cooperation, she was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of making false statements to border agents.
Single with no children, Catalano lives with her parents in Toronto. Her father is a retired electrician and her mother works as an accounting clerk. Her one brother is a high school teacher in Burlington, Ontario. Catalano received a bachelor of science degree in kinesiology from the University of Waterloo in June 2004. A Roman Catholic, she is a confirmation catechist instructor, as well.
In a sentencing memorandum filed last week, Catalano’s Buffalo lawyer, Rodney Personius, wrote that his client began working in Galea’s office in high school. She stayed in contact with him while she was in college and was hired by him as an assistant after graduating. She became his full-time assistant in October 2007.
‘My Decision to Travel’
Personius said that Catalano took full responsibility for her crime. Given that her relationship with Galea dates to her teenage years, Personius said, “it would be equally fair to find that he improperly took advantage of her dogged loyalty.”
He also quoted Catalano as saying: “I knew he was told that he had been flagged, and it was ultimately my decision to travel by myself. He was someone I admired and looked up to. I trusted him.”
Personius further stated that Catalano acknowledged that she was aware that the substances being used by Galea — specifically H.G.H. and Actovegin, an extract of calf’s blood — were generally not approved for use in the United States and that Galea did not have a license to practice medicine in this country.
In a letter to the judge in the case, Catalano suggested that her ambition might have clouded her judgment.
“For many years my family and friends took a backseat to my work and I’ve tried very hard to rebuild those relationships in the past two years,” she wrote.
“The impact of my decisions made me aware that I need to find a balance between my continued love for the field of sports medicine and what I value the most in life, my family, friends and faith.”
Personius also said that in an effort to understand “how she could so seriously stray from her upbringing and moral values,” Catalano attended counseling sessions between October 2009 and January of last year, largely because “she has been filled with guilt, remorse and trapped on an emotional roller coaster.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/sports/baseball/galea-assistants-loyalty-may-be-key-for-doctor.html?_r=1
