1. Leander Tomarkin

Born in 1895 in Switzerland, Leander Tomarkin never really tried hard in school. His marks were lackluster, and he dropped out of university while studying chemistry—that was the extent of his education and medical training. He spent most of his time trying to invent potions and other cures in his father’s laboratory. One of the medicines he developed was called “Antimicrobum” and was meant to fight pneumonia.

He gained international recognition in 1922 when he offered to cure Pope Benedict XV of his pneumonia. The pope died before Tomarkin could treat him, but the offer made him famous. This led him to treat the cousin of Victor Emmanuel III, who was suffering from pneumonia. Victor was so impressed by Tomarkin’s treatment that he made him the family’s personal physician.

After his success, Tomarkin traveled to the United States and started the Tomarkin-Foundation Chemistry Research. He planned and organized conferences in 1930 and 1931, when Albert Einstein stepped in as honorary president and presided over the meeting. In 1939, industrialized antibiotics became the norm and there was no need for Antimicrobum. Tomarkin attempted other inventions but never succeeded


2. Kristina Ross

In late 2009 and early 2010, in at least two separate incidents at bars in Boise, Idaho, a “plastic surgeon” named “Berlyn Aussieahshowna” approached two different women and offered them free breast exams. She used medical terms and even gave them a number to call for a follow-up. The women consented to the exam, and one even exposed her breasts to the “doctor” in the washroom. However, when they called the phone number Aussieahshowna gave them, the employees at the real plastic surgery center to whom the number belonged said they had never heard of her and contacted the police.

The police interviewed the two victims, which led them to Kristina Ross. Upon her arrest, the police made an interesting discovery: Kristina Ross had a criminal record. She had served two years for aggressive battery in a maximum security prison— for men. It turns out that Ross was born a man and was actually a transgender woman. She was charged with practicing medicine without a license and given 360 days in prison.

3. Francisco Rendon

For some people, going to the dentist is one of the most terrifying rituals of contemporary life, and the dentistry practice that was run by Francisco Rendon was a living nightmare. Going into his “office,” things looked suspicious For starters, it was located between an auto body shop and a scrap metal facility. The office had two rooms: a waiting room and the examination room. When performing an examination, he asked his patients sit down on a leather office chair and spit into a garbage can instead of a sink.

When police raided the office, they found he was keeping syringes and painkillers there. One of his tools was described as similar to a machine used to polish metal. Even crazier, they found five people waiting to see Rendon in the waiting room. He claimed to have a dental license from Mexico, but he was charged with providing medical services without a license.

4. Nora Zacardas

Some people aren’t just in it for the money—they desperately want to be someone different. Nora Zacardas of New South Wales, Australia seems to be one of those people. She started off by pretending to be a psychiatrist in the ‘90s and charged “clients” thousands of dollars in fees. She was arrested and convicted of those crimes, but she was just getting started. Things got much more serious in the late 2000s, when Zacardas wanted to “feel special.” She told her friends and neighbors that she was a medical intern, and there appeared to be no reason not to believe her. She even performed examinations on her friends, going as far as giving one person drugs.

When she accompanied her friends to the hospital, she convinced doctors at two different hospitals that she was a medical student, and they allowed her to watch the procedures. She even convinced her own physician of 15 years, who said she would set Zacardas up with a job once she finished medical school.

Her web of lies wasn’t destroyed until one of her friends and the mother of one of her “patients” called the Medical Board of New South Wales and discovered that she had no medical training whatsoever. In 2011, she was sentenced to nine months in prison.

5. Ernest Addo

In February 2012, Agape Senior Primary Care hired Ernest Addo as a physician. Addo saw over 500 patients at nursing home facilities in Georgia and South Carolina. There were no complaints or suspicions about him until he quit his post suddenly on August 21, 2012. That is when things completely fell apart.

Addo quit because he received a phone call from the wife of a friend. (This friend happened to be a real physician.) While she was going through her husband’s mail, she found a credit card bill that didn’t belong to him, so she called and asked Addo about it. When confronted, he admitted to stealing his friend’s identity in order to practice medicine. He was able to practice without suspicion because he had studied medicine in Belize but never graduated. He pled guilty to identity theft and fraud.

6. Keith Allen Barton

When it comes to terminal illness, people can get desperate. If someone calls themselves a doctor and claims to have a cure for your disease, you may be willing to believe anything they say. Such was the case with Keith Allen Barton in Le Mesa, California. Barton, who had no medical training, told people that he could cure serious diseases like cancer and HIV. He claimed to have 200 doctors on the staff and surgeons located in Tijuana. The closest he came to being a doctor was having the same name as a doctor who was practicing in California.

Preying on some of the most vulnerable people in society, Barton convinced a woman who was suffering from an auto-immune disease to have her teeth and part of her jaw surgically removed (not by him, thankfully). He then gave her a treatment called “dendritic cellular therapy,” which gave the woman nothing but a $32,000 bill. In another case, he told a woman that he could cure her and her two children of HIV. She paid him $18,000, and her nine-year-old daughter died from not getting proper treatment.

The police finally caught up with him when an undercover officer met with Barton and the fake doctor claimed on videotape that he could cure the officer’s recurring colon cancer. He was convicted of practicing medicine without a license and fraud and given a six-year sentence.


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