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1 Hi, my love. I, um...

I was thinking, while you were sleeping...

Isn't it incredible

that, uh, next week we are to visit, uh,

the place where we will marry?

The man has just railroaded my entire life.

Now, what do I do about the wedding?

We had almost 300 people coming from around the world.

And they all think they're going to this big, fairy-tale wedding

in a little over a month, you know. They've bought plane tickets already.

I mean, my head is swimming. I thought, "What do I do?"

I've given up everything

for a man who's... an illusion.

I just sent out an email that said,

"We regret to inform you that due to unfortunate personal circumstances

we have to call off our much-anticipated wedding."

I'm thinking, I'm not just gonna accept this nonsense and walk away.

I want answers.

I go into full-on investigative mode, you know. I just want the truth.

Every place I had never called because he told me not to call,

I start calling.

The Vatican had never heard anything about our wedding,

and Paolo most certainly was not the pope's private, personal doctor,

as he claimed.

When he told me he was with the Clintons in Germany,

when he told me he was with the Obamas in Hawaii,

none of that was true.

The list just went on and on and on and on.

I decided to start recording phone calls with him.

- Hello? - Hello, my love. How are you?

Trying to gather information.

Which phone are you using?

'Cause you're on both the Swedish and the Russian one.

No. This is the Russian one.

But I'm still missing key pieces of information.

There had to be a damn good reason he kept canceling trips to Barcelona.

I called a couple of my girlfriends and I said, "Look, will you help me?"

We're in Barcelona.

Oh my God, this is so crazy.

I knew in my gut that the real answers I needed were in that house.

I didn't know what, but I knew there was something hiding in that house.

- I had to go. - This is my closet.

Hello.

It had to be, kind of, the surprise attack when he wasn't expecting me.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

- Amen. - And don't you ever forget it, assholes.

Thank you.

We're getting ready to do a little road trip.

Also known as a drive-by.

- "Espionage" in French. - Also known as a stakeout.

What does that mean?

That means we're getting ready to go check some shit out.

I went to Barcelona with two friends.

Leigh, a very dear friend from Australia.

And Nancy, my best friend from college.

I'm now lying to Paolo.

I told him... that I was so devastated about the wedding

that I was taking a trip with some friends to Upstate New York,

you know, that I just needed to get away.

And he's telling me that he's in Russia.

So I had laid out this whole plan.

I even ordered a blond wig because I thought

I might need to disguise myself.

Who is this blond woman in the back seat?

Yolanda.

Yolanda. Ah!

- Or Elena. - Elena.

- Or Emanuela. - Paula.

- Paulina. - Paulina.

I didn't know what I was gonna find in this house in Barcelona.

So we drive to this little seaside town.

I am a nervous wreck.

To the point that Leigh was saying, "You need to find a way to calm down."

"I can literally feel your energy from the back seat."

I mean, I didn't know what to do. We were all anxious.

Paolo's house is at the top of this hill.

And we get up there. So, Leigh and Nancy jump out of the car.

My heart is in my chest.

I'm gonna puke.

The plan was that Nancy and Leigh would go to the door first.

I wanted to stay in the car,

and I wanted them to do the initial reconnaissance.

Nancy and Leigh just knocked on his door.

I saw him come down the steps with his dog. Asshole.

He's there. Not in fucking Russia.

- Hello. - Paolo, how's it going?

- This is Leigh. - Hello.

What are you doing here?

We're passing by. On holiday.

I'm not sure what's going on, but...

The house is gated, but it's up high enough on the hill

that you can see the veranda around the house.

And I see a woman.

A blond woman and two little kids.

Even from where I am,

I can hear them saying, "Dad."

Two little kids.

Coming down the stairs.

You lying fucking sack of shit! Yeah, I see you.

Motherfucking fucker, fuck you!

Up until I saw the children, I was planning to get out of the car

and confront him.

And then I couldn't move. I was frozen.

You asshole!

Fuck you!

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck you!

Fuck!

I don't think I've ever cried like that before.

It was such a deep, guttural, visceral cry of absolute

devastation and horror and heartbreak, you know?

So, the reason you haven't brought me to Barcelona,

the reason you haven't brought my daughter to Barcelona,

the whole time, you're hiding another family there.

I've quit my job. I've pulled my daughter out of her school.

I feel a kind of anger that I've never felt before in my life.

And at the root of this, mostly, is my daughter.

You fucking walk in and you lie to her too.

You sit in front of her

and you lie to her little face.

You talk to her about the school you've enrolled her in, in Barcelona,

and the life she's going to have in Barcelona.

How dare you?

How fucking dare you?

This just turned me upside down.

I couldn't fathom that for two years,

he had been hiding another family.

All these last-minute cancellations. All these emergency surgeries.

He's lying through his teeth.

He's hiding them.

He's hiding me.

How many other families are there?

How many other women are there?

My name is Ana Paula Bernardes Pedrosa.

My son Danilo and I

were in a car accident in 2009.

And our lives changed forever.

After the accident, he was intubated.

The tube damaged the trachea.

Careggi Hospital has appointed as the head

of its world-leading regenerative thoracic surgery department

internationally renowned surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini.

Professor Macchiarini examined Danilo

and said he would operate on him the following morning.

He explained the whole operation, in great detail.

So I asked him, "Could my son die?"

"Madam, please!"

"No patient has ever died under my care,

and your son won't be the first."

So I said, "Praise God."

And he said, "God? What God?"

"There is no God."

He went like this.

"See these?"

"This is God."

The next day, he operated on Danilo.

He told me there had been complications with the surgery.

He had to be put into an induced coma

for one week.

An artery had burst.

So I asked, "And now?"

"It's all fine. I rebuilt the artery."

"Everything's okay. We've examined everything."

"He's absolutely fine."'

A week went by.

Danilo began following things with his eyes.

Like this.

He began to say, "Yes... No..."

by squeezing his hand.

He came on by leaps and bounds.

One morning, my phone rang.

They said, "Madam,

please come to Careggi as soon as possible."

"Your son has had a hemorrhage,

and we've taken him to the operating theater."

I got there and I said, "Where is he?"

Then I saw the room where Danilo had been.

There was blood everywhere.

And so I tried to call Paolo.

Paolo wasn't in Italy.

I said, "You must come back, Professor."

And he told me, "But I cannot."

"Look, I'm operating on your son even at a long distance."

"I'm on the phone to the team."

"I'll call you once we're finished."

Eventually, he called me.

He said, "Is someone there with you?"

I said, "You've never asked me that. What's going on?"

"Is something wrong with Danilo?"

I said to him, "Is my son dead?"

"Is my son dead?"

"Is that what you want to tell me?"

"Unfortunately, madam."

"I'm really sorry," he said.

At 2:40 on 2nd April 2011,

my son died.

Right after Danilo's death, I made an official complaint.

I wanted to know why Danilo died.

I blamed the hospital.

I was sure that Paolo had nothing to do with it.

But then my lawyer called and said,

"You must tell Paolo that he too

is under investigation for manslaughter."

At this point, I picked up the phone and called him.

And he said to me, "Hey."

"Relax."

"You know I have nothing to do with it."

I believed him.

Everything he told me I believed 100%.

After Danilo died,

Paolo was calling me every day.

He was always comforting me.

I started getting used to

his phone calls.

If the phone rang and it was Paolo,

I would feel happy.

That's how it started.

I'd get butterflies in my stomach and I would wonder...

"He's a genius. He travels the world."

"Why is he interested in me?"

Whilst we were investigating Paolo Macchiarini,

we were producing a documentary.

Yes.

When I saw the footage that showed Paolo's surgery on Julia Tuulik...

It has folded over and become completely...

What can be done about it?

Nothing.

It raised the stakes, and made the whole situation

a lot more, um, dangerous and difficult.

It was crucial to see the scientific background to all this

that he was building on.

Obviously, I wanted to see the whistleblowers.

After a lot of, sort of, uh, spy magazine,

chasing about where I wasn't allowed to know their names,

their address, and sort of led to different places,

I finally entered this flat,

and there was this wild-eyed guy in a T-shirt,

not looking like a heart surgeon at all.

I had a shaved head and a Black Sabbath T-shirt on.

I was at the height of paranoia.

Bosse thought I was just absolutely insane.

But I had him on my couch and told him the story

that Paolo had never done the animal studies

with the plastic windpipe.

Because then I knew that he was actually just killing these patients.

I started to realize the whistleblowers understood

much, much earlier than I did

how dangerous Macchiarini and his methods were.

Paolo was doing everything in the reverse order.

You're supposed to end up with humans when you've done this extensive testing.

And instead, he started off with humans, and then went to the lab rats.

Making these discoveries about the lack of animal experimentation

was really a critical moment,

because if you haven't done that, you're not a real scientist.

So, obviously, he had been lying.

But we needed proof to be sure that he actually had lied to his patients.

{n8}Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene shows off his scar after surgery

that saved his life.

The father of two recently became

the world's first recipient of a man-made organ.

He told me straight, "We did not try this to human beings."

"We tried this into pigs."

He was very confident.

Enough to make me, you know, pursue it.

You know, to make me believe in this.

Well, then I accepted it.

But I was very much scared.

Frankly speaking.

Paolo had been leading his patients to believe

that there had been done animal experimentations.

If Andemariam had never been conned

by Paolo Macchiarini,

never signed his informed consent,

he most probably would have been alive today.

Andemariam was coerced into doing this procedure.

Paolo lied to him.

He was the guinea pig.

And how are you?

I am fine.

That's very good.

When I was certain that the patients had been subjected to unproven methods,

lethal methods that actually were killing them,

I and the team had an obligation to confront Paolo with our findings.

What do you want to say?

Before the rats and animal experiments,

you, uh, put the, uh... synthetic scaffolding into five patients.

And... to me, that seems extraordinary...

Before the rats, I put...

That's a wrong statement.

But if I just look at the chronology, I see five surgeries.

No rats, no pigs, no animal experiments.

- And then animal experiments. - Uh-huh.

And then I could see a light going up in his eyes and he said...

Are you sure?

Why you don't go to the lab and you look at the data in the lab book?

Here or in Russia?

How do you know that we didn't do animal studies in Russia?

"Of course you haven't been allowed into the Russian lab books. No!"

"You don't know what beautiful animal experiments we did in Russia."

"No. And they worked. They were fine. They were excellent."

And I could see Paolo literally becoming happy and beaming and glowing,

of having rewritten history.

And... And probably reality.

I... I think he actually, more or less, believed what he said.

So it's... it's... totally untrue.

That was a revealing moment for me because that was the only time

when I could actually see a lie

being manufactured in real time.

You are... You are a producer. A TV producer, right?

How can you understand, possibly understand all the details

of a medical evaluation?

After a couple of hours of interview, he thought he was the winner.

Can you switch off?

Okay, can you switch off this as well?

I was sure he would call the vice-chancellor and his associates

at the institute and say,

"This fucking guy from television has found all this stuff."

"He's going to paint a terrible, black picture of all of us

now on national TV."

"Get ready."

And he didn't. He didn't mention it to anyone.

KAROLINSKA INSTITUTE

He was so sure of himself, and so sure that he would succeed,

he just, uh, kept on.

Just kept on.

We'd been texting and chatting all summer.

The first time we met again, it was to go out for dinner together.

I was so nervous.

Thinking, "God, what am I going to wear?!"

And then he arrived, I heard the bell.

"My God, it's him!"

He was carrying some flowers.

Two roses, which he gave to me.

We had dinner.

He'd look at me from time to time, in such a way

that I just couldn't wait to kiss him.

I remember it very clearly.

He said, "Ana Paula."

I said, "Yes?"

He held my shoulder, turned me around.

That was our first kiss.

It was something I'd been waiting for, for a long time.

I just didn't want to let him go again.

And that was when our relationship began.

When I travelled with Paolo, we'd fly first class.

Hotels would always be five-star.

We'd eat in the most fashionable restaurants.

Money wasn't an issue when you were with him.

Paolo loved doing surprises.

I'd think he was in another part of the world,

when actually he was already in Italy.

He'd call me saying,

"You have one hour to prepare your luggage."

We're going who knows where.

To Paris.

To Positano.

Barcelona.

New York.

I remember when he took me to Venice.

We were just like two lovebirds,

on a gondola.

I didn't understand why he always wanted to take pictures from behind.

"If we see your face, we'll miss the surroundings."

Paolo told me I couldn't post the pictures.

Because everyone knew

that he was under investigation for my son, Danilo.

Paolo told me that once the case was over,

there'd be nothing to worry about, nothing to hide.

That we'd be able to be out in the open,

take pictures and walk hand in hand.

I was waiting for that moment.

After two years, the investigation came to an end

and the allegations against Paolo were dropped.

I was really happy.

I felt relieved.

Paolo and I had a daughter.

Our beautiful baby girl.

He found us a small apartment.

But he was so busy

with his surgeries.

So he was always away.

He was always on the go.

I felt a bit neglected,

but he was doing a good thing, right?

He was saving lives.

That plane ride home from Barcelona was so sobering.

I was in such a pensive, reflective state, you know?

I mean, I felt like the whole world was sitting on my head.

I now had all the evidence that I needed.

It was indisputable that Paolo was lying to me.

Had been lying to me the whole time.

There was never going to be any wedding.

When I stepped off the plane, I decided, "I want to get rid of everything

in my apartment that has to do with Paolo."

There was artwork on the wall that he had bought.

There was a whole closet full of clothes that he left there.

And he had given me so much beautiful jewelry.

The engagement ring was made out of white gold.

With all these beautiful, expensive diamonds.

And he had told me that this ring was worth $100,000.

I walk into this jewelry shop and I said,

"Listen, I need some jewelry appraised."

And it's this little man.

He's peering closer and squinting. I said, "How much is it worth?"

He said, "If you're lucky,

you could sell this for $1,000. And I don't even know you'll get that."

He looked up at me, said, "I'm really sorry."

"I don't know your whole story, but I feel really terribly for you."

"Whoever this man is, he's not a good man."

Once I unraveled all the lies

and realized he was literally lying to me about everything, you know...

Not even my ring was real.

I thought, "Oh my God. Oh my God!"

If he's lying to me like this, there's no way in hell it stops there.

There's no way he's not also lying in the medical and professional arena.

And then it hits me that... I have to tell my story.

I have to go public.

It's my responsibility to let the world know

that Dr. Paolo Macchiarini is not who you think he is.

I had a friend who knew somebody at the magazine Vanity Fair.

I didn't want to wait. I wanted the story out fast as possible.

So, I met this reporter on a busy rooftop in Manhattan.

Just started gushing.

"This happened and that happened... Blah, blah, blah."

It's all coming out. I'm talking a mile a minute.

I don't think he was taking notes, trying to keep up with this insane story.

And at one point he says, "Okay, this is nuts."

The article in Vanity Fair came out in January of 2016,

so only six months after our supposed wedding.

Just before the Swedish public service broadcaster

was about to go live with the series,

somebody told me there is this article you might want to read in Vanity Fair.

I googled it and found the article, and there was Paolo,

the very same Paolo I'd spent most of the previous year

filming or interviewing.

And suddenly, I saw a lot that had been going on

that I had no idea about.

It quickly dawned on me that what had happened in his love life

actually confirmed a number of things that I had found in his professional

and scientific and medical life.

I think one of the major things was how the con progressed.

It was a very slow, meticulous progression

from a small lie to a slightly bigger lie

to an even bigger lie,

and then slowly, slowly, slowly building this enormous thing...

...that is based on nothing, basically.

And that's the way he'd been working in medicine as well.

If you really want to do a successful con,

you have to do it slowly so that people almost don't notice what's going on.

I was in Rome.

My relationship with Paolo was normal.

It was fine.

And I got this phone call from a journalist

who told me an article had come out in a magazine,

and he told me the whole story.

I went on the website,

and I saw him on a gondola with her.

My whole world collapsed.

Can you believe it? I mean...

My whole world collapsed.

I called him straight away.

He told me it was all a lie.

That it wasn't true.

"This is the woman who made the documentary."

"She fell in love with me."

I said, "But what were you doing in a gondola with her, in Venice?"

I said, "You miserable wretch! Son of a..."

"What have you done to me?"

"There's another woman in America?"

"Since when?"

"How long have you been with this woman?"

"Don't you have any respect for your daughter?"

I thought about when he took me to New York.

On the first day, Paolo went sightseeing with me.

Then he took me back to the hotel,

and he told me that he had to work.

The next day, I was left by myself,

and I had to take a plane in the evening.

Then I realized he took me to New York because she lives in New York.

I lived in Rome, and he took her to Rome.

Right under my nose.

I was angry.

So angry, God knows.

He lied.

Paolo takes advantage

of people that are vulnerable,

of people that are fragile.

What doctor, after one of his patients dies,

is in constant contact with the mother of that patient?

He abused his position.

I hate him.

I've never hated anyone in my whole life.

Until then, I didn't know what hate was.

I took the baby and all my belongings,

and I left.

How many other women were in Paolo's life?

I have no idea.

Good morning.

I hope that you slept very well and had a chance to dream of us.

He sent me so many videos.

All these gushing, loving messages. You know, "I love you."

I love you.

- "I miss you." - I miss, um... you.

"Love of my life." "You're my everything."

Only a few of the videos does he say my name.

So now, in hindsight, was he just hitting send on every different phone?

You know, Russia, Sweden, Italy, Spain...

Every woman got the same video?

Probably. Possibly.

And I thought a lot about this glowing story I had made about him.

I just need to help my patients.

Clearly, if I can save

many among my patients,

then even better.

And it just hit me like a ton of bricks.

He picked me because I'm a journalist.

He's roped me into something where I'm now complicit

in helping him cover up his fucking lies.

"When the shit hits the fan,

I'm going to have my loving fiancée by my side

who will do whatever she can to protect me."

I think he was using me for that reason.

A discovery right out of a movie script...

Doctors are celebrating a medical first...

Changing the game and saving lives.

I personally don't believe that

it would have been possible for Macchiarini to do anything at all

if the media would not have willfully participated in creating this lie.

This was part of an orchestrated media campaign

where many different people in different institutions

in different countries

had participated in the withholding of information,

or sometimes even outright lying,

uh, and how that turned into a web of lies.

For example, the film Supercells

that had this beautiful storyline

about a girl who had a hole in her throat.

This is Julia.

I've got so many plans, so much I want to do.

First I need to get well, and then I'd like to continue my studies.

Later we find an email that has been written

by the producers of Supercells,

just prior to the film having its premiere.

"Dear Julia Tuulik. I hope you have recovered well

and are back in St. Petersburg and enjoy life."

"The documentary is going to be shown this month. Do you want to see it?"

"How are you anyway?"

"Are you having any trouble? Is the new trachea working as it should?"

And Julia answers.

Remember that this is before the film actually has a premiere.

"I am very, very bad."

"More than half a year I have spent in Krasnodar Hospital."

"Three weeks after the first surgery, I started rotting from the inside."

"And I am still rotting."

"I now weigh 47 kg."

"I can barely walk."

"It's difficult to breathe."

"I have no voice."

"It smells from me in a way that people shudder away."

"The artificial tracheas are pure shit."

"Sorry to say so. Yours, Julia."

So the producers of this film that... becomes the starting point of our journey,

they know that this is fake.

It took exactly one year from the day when we were first handed

the copy of the whistleblowers' complaint until broadcast.

A #184 DOCUMENTARY THE EXPERIMENTS

Well, that's a huge... That's a huge accusation.

- And what would your reply be? - I don't reply to this accusation.

That documentary had a massive, massive impact in Sweden, you know.

Everybody has seen it.

Understanding what he had done to his patients,

and the horrible way they died,

and what they had suffered, and how much they had suffered...

was so appalling and so heartbreaking.

You watch that documentary and you realize

this thing never worked.

It never stood a damn chance of working.

He was taking a goddamn plastic tube,

he might as well have taken a straw, and putting it in people's throats.

I believe he knew it. I think he knew all along

this fucking thing was never gonna work, and he did it anyway.

The reaction in public was just... people were so upset.

People were crying, they were so disturbed.

There was something that touched people's hearts.

I think it was the impunity of what had been going on

and the arrogance of this man that was instantly recognizable

to a big part of the population.

The picture of you that, I guess, uh, the TV audience have

is that you're a person who takes risks with people's lives.

What would you like to say to the Swedish people?

As long as you are not... um, found guilty,

you have the presumption of innocence.

The accusations are false.

And it's, uh, quite astonishing

to accuse someone for doing experimental surgery

when, indeed, it was an experimental procedure.

I have been treated

like I would never treat even the

worst animal.

Everybody was upset, and, you know, everybody demanded heads to fly.

The Karolinska leadership had to resign.

But they got new jobs at different positions.

When the New York Times article came out, I thought it was over for Paolo.

I thought the FBI was going to parachute in

and lift him out of there.

Nothing happened.

The documentary that Bosse made,

that was what killed him.

{n8}The surgeon and scientist Paolo Macchiarini

{n8}has now been fired from the Karolinska Institute.

Finally, now the cases of the three Swedish patients

have been brought to court.

There has to be a reckoning.

There should be punishment.

When I see him in court, I want to look good.

Yeah, it's been seven years since I...

since I found out that he was lying about everything.

And it's been seven years of me

being in investigative mode and exposing him.

I'm sure he doesn't want to see me.

I'm sure he wishes I would shut the hell up.

But I'm not gonna shut the hell up. Not until there's justice.

{n8}Today begins the trial against the former star surgeon

{n8}Paolo Macchiarini, in what has been called

one of the biggest lies in medical history.

It's such a weird feeling to look at this man and think,

you know, this is a man I traveled the world with,

a man I thought I was marrying,

a man I thought I was spending the rest of my life with,

a man that was in my bed.

And now he's an accused criminal.

I feel anger, I feel disgust. I feel a whole host of things.

FULL

Seeing Paolo behind plate glass windows with his headphones

and interpreters and lawyers...

He belongs in that chair.

He should be in a court of law trying to explain his crimes.

SOLNA DISTRICT COURT

I tried to get in eye contact with Paolo several times.

But he didn't look up.

He just looked down on a spot on the floor in front of him.

Of course, I feel that I also have blood on my hands.

And, uh, I basically wanted to...

to tell him how much I, uh...

hate him

for what he's done.

To me.

To the patients.

To the relatives of the patients.

And, uh, actually, for fooling the world

to believe in this concept of plastic windpipes.

The court came to the surprising conclusion

that only one of the three Swedish procedures was actually illegal,

the horrific procedure on Yesim Cetir.

They exonerated Paolo on the first two procedures,

claiming that the patients were going to die acutely.

That they were in the process of dying, which is simply not true.

That wasn't the case.

It sends a really dangerous signal to the medical world

that it's okay to try out new, dangerous, lethal innovations,

that you haven't tested, on animals or in the lab,

on human patients.

He's been put on probation for two years.

It's the equivalent of a slap on the hand.

It's wrong for... those patients who died.

I think it's... tragic, really, for the families of the patients.

And letting him walk around and do whatever he wants,

um... and not spend a day behind bars isn't justice. You know?

Because his patients deserve more than that.

The families of his patients deserve more than that.

He didn't take care of my son.

I feel cheated.

Deceived.

Even after everything what happened, Paolo can still be a surgeon.

He's got his license.

And in countries which is not really covered by this media and this verdict,

there he most probably can still do these operations.

And he will.

Medicine has replaced religion, especially in Western civilizations.

We want miracle solutions to

the horrible diseases that afflict us.

I know that he said that his hands were instruments of God.

We all want a messiah, we all want,

you know, a pill that'll fix everything, and it just doesn't work like that.

Macchiarini was selling dreams.

But he wouldn't be selling them if there weren't any buyers.

It's not just the conscious, evil actions of one man

that lead to bad results.

It is also the small... cowardly non-actions.

And they exist in each and every one of us.

All the time.