Vegas man sentenced for practicing medicine without a license

Andrew Michael, 37, a flight school supply store clerk from Las Vegas, was sentenced to serve 120 days in the Clark County Detention Center pursuant to his June guilty plea to one felony count of attempt to practice medicine without a license. Michael was immediately remanded into custody by Judge Valorie Vega following the District Court sentencing hearing.

Michael was arrested in May 2003 at his Meadow Diagnostic Imaging Center clinic in Las Vegas after the Nevada Attorney General's Office began a workers compensation fraud investigation and learned from his employees that they were suspicious of his qualifications to practice medicine.

Michael represented himself as a surgeon and graduate of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from May 2001 until May 2003.

He served as CEO of the imaging center, and supervised numerous potentially dangerous medical procedures under the pretext that he was a physician.

Michael had received a bachelor's degree from the now-defunct Hamilton University, an online school based in Wyoming, and was enrolled in St. Luke's School of Medicine, a correspondence medical school based in Liberia, Africa, that has since been shut down by African authorities.

"Mr. Michael's behavior was incredibly dangerous and put the health and safety of numerous Nevadans at risk," said Attorney General Brian Sandoval. "We believe Judge Vega sent an appropriate message with her sentence."

Michael was sentenced to 45 months in prison, suspended, and ordered to serve four years of intensive supervision probation upon his release from jail.