Dr. Barnes Scammer Gerald Barnabaum, or better known
as Dr. Barnes to his patients and colleagues, put on one of the best acting performances
for over 20 years.
He faked being a doctor by stealing the identity of a real doctor, someone named Gerald Barnes.
While driving home one day, the real Dr. Barnes heard over the radio that he'd been arrested
for manslaughter!
That's when he knew his identity had been stolen, and it wouldn't be the last time Gerald
would pretend to be him.
The Imposter Gerald had a normal upbringing in Chicago,
Illinois.
Born in 1933, he was more talented than all his peers, something they had to come to terms
with.
As a youth, he was one heck of an actor, so much so that he even landed a role in several
traveling shows.
This, according to one Frank Heckl, a retired senior investigator with the California Medical
examiner's office.
His former colleagues remembered him as a lively person, witty and charming.
Gerald was also remembered fondly as a confident person with a flair for storytelling, something
that probably branched from his exceptional acting skills.
Equipped with a degree in pharmacology, Gerald worked in a Chicago office where his colleagues
and friends remember him as an easy-going person.
They even suggested that he try medical school; they genuinely thought he would make an excellent
doctor.
Some patients even referred to him as a doctor, a subtle nuance they may have gone to his
head, encouraging him to pursue the thorny path of impersonation.
License Revoked Gerald's medical life wasn't entirely a lie.
He did attend the University of Illinois College of Pharmacy in Chicago, graduating in 1958.
He practiced as a pharmacist until 1971 when his license was revoked in the aftermath of
Medicaid fraud charges.
This revocation marked his fraudulent journey in the medical world.
He moved to California in 1976, where he officially adopted the name Gerald Barnes.
He started by stealing the identity of a licensed medical doctor in Stockton.
He was reborn and worked as a physician in the Los Angeles and Southern California region
for the next three years.
Method As mentioned earlier, it takes something special
to impersonate a doctor, and Gerald had it in him.
Gerald developed a plan to get his hands on the documents belonging to the real Gerald
Barnes.
According to a Medical Economics article, Gerald wrote to California Medical authorities
on a letterhead bearing the name of Dr. Gerald Barnes and tactfully requested copies of records
the real Barnes was required to file with the state.
He explained that he needed the copies because he had just undergone a bitter divorce with
his spouse, who destroyed the originals during those trying times.
After getting his hands on the initial documents, he used the information he learned from those
documents and wrote another letter, this time requesting the authentic copies of Dr. Barnes's
medical school degree and other credentials.
Fully armed with legitimate papers, he applied and obtained a job at a clinic in East Los
Angeles.
After a while, he landed a better-paying job at a medical center in Irvine, California.
His career was in full swing; he was never going to look back.
John McKenzie As everyone can imagine, Gerald's lucky run
as a fake doctor would eventually end up at a fatal point.
In 1979, after three years of practicing as a phony doctor, Gerald made his biggest blunder
yet, this time involving the life of an innocent man, John McKenzie.
December 26th, 1979, the day after Christmas, McKenzie visited Dr. Barnes.
He was suffering from dry mouth, sudden weight loss, dizziness, and uncontrolled thirst;
medically, these were signs of diabetes.
Gerald, instead, told McKenzie to go home with a single instruction- get some rest.
He prescribed some drugs for Vertigo and sent him home.
Two days later, McKenzie's body was discovered in his apartment, and all the signs pointed
towards uncontrolled diabetes as the cause of his unfortunate death.
Gerald's medical negligence cut short the life of 29-year-old McKenzie.
Despite vividly portraying symptoms of type 1 diabetes, the quack doctor gave him a drug
for Vertigo and released him.
Following John McKenzie's visit to the fake Dr. Barnes' facility, a blood test conducted
on him later revealed that he had much higher blood glucose content, indicating severe hyperglycemia.
When a physician's assistant saw the results, he was shocked and made a distress call to
the local police, who would later discover the body of the young McKenzie.
The physician immediately figured out something was amiss and had more than enough reasons
to believe Dr. Barnes wasn't who he claimed to be.
He was an imposter.
The assistant knew a real doctor wouldn't have missed the clear symptoms that McKenzie
displayed.
The police got involved, and true to the physician's gut feeling, a year later, in 1980, Gerald
was charged with second-degree murder in John McKenzie's death.
The charge was later reduced to manslaughter, and he was additionally charged with practicing
without a legit medical license.
Gerald was sentenced to three years and four months in jail.
He went on to serve 19 months before being released on parole.
Continuity Gerald left prison and landed a salesman job
at an industrial maintenance supply company in Anaheim.
But, claiming the life of an innocent man didn't deter Gerald from continuing with his
erratic medical career.
After his release from prison, and despite being on parole, the fake doctor picked up
where he had left as if nothing of substance had happened.
By 1984, he was back with a bang, working at a clinic in Orange County, where he was
soon discovered and re-arrested.
This happened after he tried applying for hospital privileges, only for the real Dr.
Barnes to blow the whistle.
Yet again, he faced the wrath of the law after being convicted of grand theft and forgery.
His crimes landed him a jail sentence that lasted three years and four months.
Persistent as a mosquito, Barnes kept going, showing the state that he was a relentless
criminal.
His third conviction came in 1989, courtesy of stealing the identity of a pharmacist based
in San Francisco.
This man's name was Donald Barnes, and Gerald was caught trying to use Donald's license
when applying for a job.
Dr. Barnes was arrested for a fourth in early 1991, this time for parole violation.
He didn't spend much time in jail; by October the same year, he was out.
As a persistent imposter, Gerald worked in half a dozen medical facilities across Los
Angeles for four and half years.
His fraudulent efforts didn't go unpaid as he earned an excellent 400,000 dollars over
the same period.
His phony services also cost the insurance companies $5 Million in coverages.
Real Doctor Barnes The fake Dr. Barnes used the resume of the
real one to convince hospitals to hire him.
Decorated to the core, his resume indicated that he had received a doctorate in pharmacology
from the University of Illinois and a medical degree from the University of Wisconsin.
That stellar academic record was backed by 17-years of experience practicing general
family medicine at the Garfield Medical Center in Illinois.
The first encounter involving the two doctors, the imposter and the real, is a rather funny
one.
Responding to the whole saga involving the fake doctor, the real Dr. Barnes narrated
how he was driving home when he heard that police had picked him up for manslaughter.
He said it felt pretty frightening.
The FBI's Doctor Gerald, in a twist of irony, also worked at
a facility that served FBI agents.
In 1995, the fake medical practitioner obtained a position as a staff physician at a Los Angeles
clinic called Executive Health Group.
The facility handled physical checkups on FBI agents and several senior officials of
the Federal Reserve Bank.
Reportedly, Gerald inspected hundreds of FBI agents in a year.
While earning a base salary of 110,000 dollars, Gerald interacted with top security officials,
which is an impressive client list, according to then-US Attorney Daniel Saunders.
He wrote prescriptions for and performed examinations on the agents.
Between July 1995 and April 1996, Dr. Barnes examined the very FBI agents who'd arrest
him had they found out his true identity.
In true Gerald fashion, he probably misdiagnosed some of them.
In one case, Gerald failed to diagnose an FBI agent who was suffering from Prostate
Cancer.
Another had a serious heart condition that slipped past Gerald's radar.
Discovery And in a twist of events, he was discovered
when a new investigator representing the state medical board took over his case and cross-examined
him.
He was actually one of Gerald's patients-- talk about a "flew too close to the sun" scenario!
Attempting to throw kicks of a dying horse, Gerald faked suicidal intent and later faked
a heart attack; neither worked in his favor.
It would later come to light that Dr. Barnes had misdiagnosed many patients and prescribed
wrong medications.
Dr. Barnes was ultimately sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison.
The whole incident exposed the California health system that is tasked with protecting
the lives of sick and innocent people.
In the follow-up to Dr. Barnes saga, the Medical Board of California rushed in to implement
sticker rules for checking health workers' credentials and backgrounds.
They also outlined stricter measures before copies of personal documents could be issued,
like the ones Gerald used to pull off his act.
Escapes from Prison The fake Dr. Barnes is one like no other.
After all the crimes, convictions, and parole violations, he still dared to escape from
prison.
In 2000, during a transfer to another prison, Dr. Barnes escaped while being transferred
from California to another minimum-security jail in Minnesota!
Four weeks later, he was captured by the US Marshals Service.
Guess what he was doing?
Working in another medical clinic!
This unnecessary crime earned him an additional six months in prison for escaping custody.
Gerald spent the rest of his life in prison until his death in June 2018.
He was 84 years old.
The real Dr. Barnes spent countless hours, months, and years trying to undo the damage
the imposter had asserted on his name.
Still, Gerald's tale remains one of the boldest stories of medical impersonation.
He could have landed himself a spot on any number of TV medical Dramas; his life certainly
played out like one.
Instead, Gerlad's story has been told through several true-crime media outlets, including
the Canadian show, Masterminds and American Greed.
Click to watch one of these next videos!