Charleston Beat — May 6

By Ben Spanner
Moss behind the wheel

New England Patriots wide receiver Randy Moss is, of all things, slapping together a racing team to race in NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck Series.

“There are some pretty awesome challenges in building a program like this from the ground up, but I am looking foward to it,” Moss said in a public statement.

Even though there’s no word on sponsored drivers for Moss Motorsport LLC, Moss hopes to have his team ready for halfway through the 2008 season, getting in some racing before the end of the racing season.

Moss, a native of West Virginia from DuPont High School and Marshall University, is a race car fan and has been for quite some time. Who knew?

What guys will do for a girl

Once upon a time, a local Charleston eye doctor apparently really liked this girl. He liked this girl so much he wrote bogus prescriptions for patients in order to obtain information about her then recently admitted to this fact in a federal court.

Dr. R. David Allara, 52, claimed he knew the prescriptions he wrote to various patients between August 2005 and April 2006, had nothing to do with medical reasons. Instead, his master plan was to provide a patient (who was a friend of the girl he was dating) with the drugs in exchange for knowledge about this woman.

Although Allara had problems being sued in the past for allegedly performing surgeries while high as a kite, this is Allara’s first known information-for-drugs scandal. Due to be sentenced July 15, Allara could face up to four years in prison and fines up to $250,000. Quite a price to pay considering all he had to do was ask his girlfriend a couple questions. On the other hand, I’d give my left arm (or fraudulent meds) to figure out what women are thinking ...

Patients have a bone to pick with this doctor

Two people are independently suing in West Virginia courts, claiming they were given untested, illegally harvested bone grafts when they underwent surgeries in Charleston and Huntington. But what do I mean by that? Oh, just wait. Just wait.

From what we can gather, Terrance Reedy, of Ironton, Ohio, and Rosemary Huffman, of Charleston, both submitted complaints that the bones that were grafted during surgery had problems. Reedy claimed his bone graft caused hepatitis while Huffman had no sickness because of the graft but was weary because she went in for surgery seven days after the government recalled 20 some products from the company involved — one actually being used in her surgery.

It turns out Michael Mastromarino, a long time and former New Jersey oral surgeon, is the big cheese behind this whole ordeal. Mastromarino pled guilty last month to raiding funeral homes and city morgues and extracting the bones from the corpses. We know, gross right?

Mastomarino is staring down the barrel of 54 years in prison and possibly handing over $4 million he pieced together through his business Biomedical Tissue Services.

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Contact Ben at bspanner@graffitiwv.com