Visit the Photo Place

View the Stafford County community page

Feds: Tech a phony

Stafford resident accused of falsifying credentials, doing improper inspections of diagnostic equipment

From STAFF and WIRE REPORTS

Date published: 7/23/2004

Federal prosecutors say a Stafford County resident used phony credentials to improperly inspect mammography machines and other diagnostic equipment at dozens of East Coast hospitals for 15 years.

Locally, those facilities include Culpeper Regional Hospital and Culpeper Outpatient Center; Fauquier Hospital and Warrenton Professional Center; Kaiser Permanente in Woodbridge; Prince William Hospital in Manassas; and Northern Virginia Radiology & Nuclear Medicine in Woodbridge.

But a review of Perry Beale's work at more than 50 hospitals and medical centers in five states and the District of Columbia found there were enough checks in the system to have prevented the machines from endangering anyone.

"Based on current information, Mr. Beale's activities posed no health risk to mammography patients," said Dr. Charles Finder, associate director of the Food and Drug Administration's Division of Mammography Quality and Radiation Programs. "Therefore, these patients do not need to take any action as a result."

Beale was charged with 38 counts of mail fraud after federal investigators discovered that he falsified inspection reports and miscalibrated radiation equipment while working as a private safety consultant in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

Beale, who was suspended by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2002, claimed on a resume that he was certified by the American Board of Radiology and that he had received a master's degree from the University of Virginia in radiologic technology, nuclear medicine and radiological physics.

Authorities said that when Beale was confronted, he acknowledged he didn't have any of those credentials.

"We know now that Perry Beale was a fraud," U.S. Attorney John L. Brownlee said yesterday at a Charlottesville news conference.

Beale turned himself in to authorities yesterday morning and was later released on a $25,000 bond. His lawyer, Richard Milnor, did not return a phone call to his office seeking comment.

According to public records, Beale sold a home in Stafford's Seven Lakes subdivision in May and bought another residence in the county. Attempts to reach Beale at his home were unsuccessful last night.

Prosecutors said he began working in 1988 as an apprentice to a medical physicist and radiation safety officer in Maryland. When his mentor died two years later, Beale decided to continue working on his own.

Follow us on

Date published: 7/23/2004