SAN DIEGO

A prominent AIDS researcher in Florida is facing trial in federal court in Miami over a billing scheme that started in 1989 in which he is alleged to have obtained illegally more than $570,000 from two institutions.

Lionel Resnick, 42, who formerly ran the laboratory in the Pearlman Research Center of Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach, was indicted last August in the US District Court in Miami on 52 counts of mail fraud and money laundering. He is alleged to have set up a mock laboratory company operating from his home to bill the University of Miami and the All Children's Hospital in St Petersburg, Florida, for tests related to AIDS research and clinical care.

In 1994, Resnick took a high-profile and controversial stand on whether a Florida dentist with AIDS had infected some of his patients with HIV. On the CBS programme 60 Minutes, he challenged the view of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the dentist had infected the patients.

Resnick has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and has placed about $500,000 in an escrow account to pay back the two institutions. His attorneys have described the federal indictment as an excessive action, and say that it grew from an administrative misunderstanding. The beginning of the criminal trial has been repeatedly delayed as Resnick contested legal points. An appeal to a higher court has delayed the trial until later this year.

The discovery of billing irregularities caused considerable concern at the University of Miami, where Resnick was a key collaborator on national AIDS trials, and led to a review of research projects in which he was involved. A dermatologist by training, Resnick carried out tests for AIDS research by Margaret A. Fischl, an internal medicine specialist at the university.

University officials say they found no problems with the scientific findings. The National Institutes of Health's Office of Research Integrity is monitoring the Resnick affair; officials there declined to comment. Resnick has left Mount Sinai, but continues to treat patients with AIDS-related lesions.

According to the federal indictment, the Mount Sinai laboratory headed by Resnick was set up with a $1-million grant from the state of Florida to carry out sophisticated tests for AIDS research. In July 1989, Resnick founded Vironc Inc., a private company with neither employees nor equipment. By October 1989, says the indictment, he was submitting invoices “to the University of Miami for payment to Vironc rather than Mount Sinai”.

It continues: “In truth and in fact, the AIDS-related testing requested by the University of Miami continued to be performed at the Mount Sinai lab by Mount Sinai personnel using Mount Sinai equipment.” By February 1990, Resnick is alleged to have done the same thing for tests from the All Children's Hospital.

Federal investigators have also been looking into billing practices at a health spa that Resnick owns in Miami Beach. Court documents say agents raided the Imagen Medical Day Spa in May 1996, seizing records after allegations that the federal Medicare health insurance programme for the elderly may have been improperly billed $1.1 million for cosmetic treatments. No charges have been filed in this case, say federal officials.