LOS ANGELES – A federal grand jury has indicted a Los Angeles doctor on charges he lied to the national organ transplant network by giving a liver to a less needy patient and falsifying records to cover up the switch.
An eight-count indictment Wednesday accuses Dr. Richard R. Lopez Jr. of conspiracy, concealment of a material fact and falsification of records.
He faces a maximum penalty of 130 years in federal prison if convicted.
Lopez headed the now-defunct liver transplant program at St. Vincent's Medical Center. In 2005, the hospital acknowledged that doctors improperly arranged a liver transplant two years earlier for a Saudi national who was 52nd on a transplant list.
A call to Lopez's office was not immediately returned Wednesday.
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