Brownsville Resident Sentenced to Jail in Fake Stem Cell Treatment Case

Texas resident Francisco Morales, has been sentenced 60 months in federal prison plus three years of supervised release and a fine of $479,862 for his role in a conspiracy to introduce misbranded and unapproved new drugs into interstate commerce. Morales and co-defendant Lawrence Stowe, both falsely presented themselves as licensed U. S. doctors. Morales ran a medical clinic in Brownsville, Texas but he was only licensed to practice in Mexico. He also supplied co-conspirator Stowe with stem-cells he had purchased, and also treated patients with stem cells he purchased in US, then booked non-FDA approved stem cell treatments with patients at his clinic in Mexico. Morales and his co-defendants manufactured, distributed and used stems cells produced from umbilical cord blood to perform non-FDA approved procedures to treat patients suffering from cancer, amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), multiple sclerosis (MS) and other autoimmune diseases.

Who:FDA OCI, FBI, Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice.

When: January 16, 2014, January 2006-December 2011.

Where:Brownsville, Texas, U.S.A.

How: FDA-OCI, FBI and Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigations.

Additional details: Morales and Stowe were the subject of a 2010 expose by the news show 60 Minutes concerning questionable stem cell treatments.

Related sources:

" Brownsville “Doctor” Sentenced in Stem Cell Case,"DOJ Press Release. January 16, 2014.

" Convictions Entered in Two Separate Texas Cases Involving Stem Cells,"DOJ Press Release. September 7, 2012.

" Judge sentences doctor in stem cell drugs case,"Brownsville Herald. January 17, 2014.

" Federal Indictments Lead to Arrests in Stem Cell Case ,"FBI Press Release. December 28, 2011.

" Stem cell frauds Morales and Stowe plead guilty to federal charges: who’s next?,"Knoepfler Lab Stem Cell Blog. September 7, 2012.