The United Airlines passenger who was hauled off an overbooked plane is a poker-playing doctor from Kentucky with a sordid past.
Dr. David Dao, 69, who was captured in a now-viral video being forcibly dragged off the Louisville-bound flight at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on Sunday, was working as a doctor specializing in pulmonary disease in Elizabethtown when he was convicted of trading prescription drugs for sexual favors.
According to documents filed with the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, Dao was arrested in 2003 on the drug-related offenses following an undercover investigation.
The board’s probe into the criminal charges found that Dao became sexually interested in a male patient, Brian Case, whom he gave a physical examination to, including a genital examination, and whom he eventually made his office manager.
Case quit that job due to “inappropriate” remarks made by Dao, who then pursued him and arranged to give him prescription drugs in exchange for sexual acts, according to the documents, filed last year.
In 2004, Dao was convicted on a slew of felony counts of obtaining drugs by fraud or deceit and was later placed on five years of supervised probation, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported.
Dao and co-defendant Case, identified in the documents by the state medical board as “Patient A,” were both indicted in the case.
The medical board said Dao had a sexual relationship with Case and supplied him with narcotics while Case was his patient. The two would often meet at hotel rooms.
The two allegedly worked together to obtain prescription narcotics at several pharmacies over three years, according to reports.
The Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure permitted Dao to continue practicing medicine in 2015 under certain conditions, after he completed his probation and underwent psychological evaluations, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported.
Dao went to medical school in Vietnam in the 1970s before moving to the US, according to the Courier-Journal.
Dao, who previously worked at Hardin Memorial Hospital in Elizabethtown and once owned a medical practice, is a grandfather and father of five, the Daily Mail reported.
His wife, Teresa, who trained at Ho Chi Minh University in Saigon, is a pediatrician in Elizabethtown, according to the Daily Mail. Four of their five children are doctors.
Dao’s player profile on the World Series of Poker website lists his total earnings as $234,664 since he joined the poker circuit in 2006.
The bloody incident aboard Flight 3411 has caused a public relations disaster for United Airlines.
