'Career criminal' faces jail and possible deportation - Basil Wainwright convicted of selling unapproved ozone-generating devices as disease cures

In February 1990, investigating a complaint from the American Cancer Society, FDA Dallas investigator Joel Martinez learned that a lymphoma cancer patient in Texas paid $4,700 for a generator, after Wainwright promised ozone treatments would cure her cancer in three to five weeks. The patient said Wainwright told her not to take the chemotherapy prescribed by her doctors because it would destroy her immune system.

Instead, he arranged for her to receive vitamin injections in Davie, Fla., for another $4,920. When the ozone self-treatment and vitamin injections failed, Wainwright arranged for blood treatments with ozone in Tucson. But she said the three weeks of treatment only caused her spine to curve and her heart to beat erratically.

In March 1990, Cambria Cook, a consumer safety officer then with FDA's Los Angeles district, received several phone calls from an AIDS patient in Hollywood, Calif. Cook says he told her he paid Wainwright $4,250 for a generator, but it stopped producing ozone. The patient told her the firm had moved to Fort Lauderdale.

In April, Miami resident post investigator Stephen Tunks inspected the firm, which now included Geary. In an affidavit, Wainwright stated he sold only to researchers, not patients, yet he admitted selling a generator to the AIDS patient in Hollywood. He denied distributing labeling or literature with the devices.

In May, Frizzell established International Therapeutic Marketing to distribute Anglo-American ozone generators. The devices now cost $7,500 for a "standard" unit and $8,500 for a "clinical" unit.

In the summer of 1990, Wainwright stepped up his promotional activity, placing ads in local alternative medicine newspapers and conducting seminars at local hotels.

FDA learned that a Florida man who attended one of the seminars bought a generator from Geary for $7,500 to cure several family illnesses, including his wife's lung cancer and a relative's colon cancer. After the relatives used the generator, the wife's cancer progressed and the relative with colon cancer died.

A Florida woman who read about Anglo-American Research in a chiropractic journal paid $7,500 for a generator to cure her brother's Candida infection, parasties, mercury poisoning, and other afflictions. The woman had a written guarantee to return the generator for a refund if it didn't cure her brother. But when the treatment failed and she returned the generator, she wasn't able to get a refund.

On Oct. 11, 1990, Florida state officials arrested Wainwright on two counts of practicing medicine without a license. While in custody, he formed a new scheme with an associate in New York for treating the American blood supply with ozone to kill AIDS and hepatitis viruses. Wainwright pleaded no contest to the state charges and was sentenced to five years in prison. He served 18 months and was released April 20, 1992, under conditions that included requiring him to report to a control release officer.

On May 29, 1992, Wainwright was rearrested on a federal indictment, which had originated while he was in state custody in April 1991. A month later, he was freed after posting $100,000 bond, pending the federal trial. He was rearrested March 19, 1993, after FDA pointed out to the U.S. attorney that Wainwright had violated several conditions of his bond.