Eight school grades, a forged Priština diploma and a practice code issued in Bucharest: the Italian 'plastic surgeon' who operated on 28 people before being caught on a border train

Romania's medical degrees are recognised across the European Union, and students from South Asia and Africa consider it. Two documents stand between a foreign-trained doctor and a Romanian patient: an attestation from the Ministry of Education's recognition centre (CNRED) that the foreign diploma is genuine, and a practice code, the parafă, from the Public Health Directorate (DSP). The case of Matteo Politi showed how both could be obtained by a man who, according to HotNews.ro, had completed only eight grades of school.

According to Digi24, Politi, an Italian national, presented a diploma from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Priština. Prosecutors said it was false and that he had never studied medicine there. CNRED nevertheless issued an attestation on 22 March 2018. On 19 March 2018 he had filed papers with the Bucharest DSP that falsely described him as a doctor, and a certificate dated 23 March 2018 gave him a parafă code. HotNews.ro reported that he then posed under a false name as a plastic surgeon at five private clinics in Bucharest, including Spitalul Monza.

Between March and 7 December 2018, Digi24 reported, he operated on 19 patients and deceived nine more, collecting about 13,880 lei and 10,150 euro. He was caught in February 2019 on a train at the Curtici border and indicted in January 2020. On 29 November 2022 the Sector 1 Court sentenced him to three years and ten months for fraud and intellectual forgery offences, with civil damages of 1,000 lei to 11,800 euro. On 15 March 2023 Digi24 and HotNews.ro reported that the Bucharest Court of Appeal had made the sentence final, for operating on 28 people without the right to practise. Italian police arrested him in Marghera, Venice, on 22 August 2023, and Digi24 reported on 1 September that the Venice Court of Appeal had refused extradition, so he serves the sentence in Italy.

The failure was at the gate. HotNews.ro reported that prosecutors accused three DSP officials of falsifying documents and issuing the code on an incomplete file, and the attestation rested on the papers he handed in. Prosecutors said he never studied at the university named on the diploma, so an enquiry to that faculty would have exposed him before the first operation.

If you are considering medicine in Romania, deal with the university and the authorities directly, keep every original document, and be wary of any agent who offers to 'arrange' recognition. If you are a patient anywhere, a stamp is not a qualification: check the regulator's register before paying. Elsewhere on this site, the Arad case of graduations sold by SMS and Italy's false doctors show the same thing: paper can be bought, training cannot.