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Norman Fenton claimed the title of doctor of radiation health sciences. In fact, he was a fraud Date published: 10/14/2007
By JIM HALL
The Free Lance-Star The seeds of Norman Fenton’s downfall were planted in May 2005 when he testified in U.S. District Court in Harrisonburg. Fenton took the stand that day as an expert witness in the case against Perry Beale, a medical physicist who was accused of defrauding hospitals throughout central Virginia. However, prosecutors learned soon after the hearing that Fenton, too, was a fraud. They had recruited him as one of Virginia’s top inspectors of imaging equipment, a man with a client list 13 pages long, including Mary Washington Hospital and more than 220 other hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices. Yet Fenton’s fame was founded on academic distinctions that he did not earn. In fact, he was a high school graduate who got his advanced degrees by clicking on a pop-up ad on the Internet. Last month, Percival Norman Fenton returned to the same federal courthouse in Harrisonburg where he testified against Beale. He was sentenced to the same prison term that Beale received for some of the same crimes. And it was Beale, sitting in a prison cell in Maryland, who helped bring him down. Radiation inspectors Fenton said at Beale's hearing that he had never met Beale but had heard of him. The two were health physicists, members of a select group of medical experts who inspect radiation-producing machines such as mammography, X-ray and CT units. Doctors, dentists, clinics and hospitals hire them to, among other tasks, make sure that the machines aren't delivering too much radiation, either to their patients or to workers. The Virginia Department of Health maintains a list of about 150 of these private inspectors. Fenton and Beale were on the list for years and were popular with facilities in central Virginia. By 2000, however, Culpeper Memorial Hospital had become unhappy with Beale and hired Fenton to replace him. Other hospitals did the same, and once inside those hospitals, Fenton saw that Beale was not doing the work correctly. He reported him to state and federal officials. John L. Brownlee, U.S. attorney in Roanoke, said recently that as he was gathering evidence to prosecute Beale, he asked Fenton to help him understand what a medical physicist does and how the imaging machines work. Fenton "impressed me enough at the time that I decided I would use him as a witness in our sentencing of Beale," Brownlee said.
Read more stories about Fredericksburg Date published: 10/14/2007
I've met him a few times,and he seemed like a really good guy.I'm friends with his daughter and spent an entire Thanksgiving at their house one year.Never once did I have any negative feelings about him.He is a really nice,caring man and seemed like a wonderful father.I actually had physics conversations with him when I was there,and he definitely knew what he was talking about.People make mistakes,but like I said,Norm was a great guy.People that don't know him shouldn't judge him.I'm glad to have known him
I've known Norm for 20 years. He is a fellow medical
physicist
and a damned good one at that and I'm proud to have
worked with him. Despite the tone of the article, his clients
were in very capable hands. Perry Beale, on the other
hand, was a complete fraud who endangered lives. I
should know as I have picked up a bunch of Beale's old
clients. It is ironic that Beale's sentence was reduced.
All you people who are talking down about my father, just stop, you have no idea the pain hes endured. He's a good man, a great father, and my best friend. He would be so hurt if he saw this. Everyone makes mistakes, so stop with all this karma stuff
What if this guy got a chance to continue on with his lies? He could have seriously screwed up something or someone. What was he thinking? And that whole wife thing? How can you be married to someone and not know when he or she is keeping secrets? She should have known something was going on. As for Fenton, what goes around comes around so get ready for some serious "pain".
You better watch out - karma always comes back to bite you on the a$$!
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