TV Producer Scammed By 'Bad Surgeon' Paolo Macchiarini Says 'Love Bombing' Should Have Been 'Red Flag' (Exclusive)

Dashing Dr. Paolo Macchiarini swept Benita Alexander off her feet with gondola rides in Venice, Italy, lavish gifts and promises of a fairytale life together.

“It was rose petals on the floor and lipstick messages on the mirror,” Alexander, a former NBC News producer, tells PEOPLE about the Italian surgeon she met in the spring of 2013 while working on an NBC News special about his miraculous medical procedures. “All these gushing loving messages. He was extremely romantic.”

Their courtship, which peaked with his proposal on Christmas Day 2013, came crashing down in July 2015 when she learned her suave and worldly fiancé had never actually gotten divorced, as he had said. The elaborate wedding he allegedly told her he was arranging — which he claimed would be attended by former presidents, heads of state and officiated by none other than the Pope himself — was a fantasy. 

So was his plan to make organ donations obsolete with the artificial tracheas he invented. Ultimately, whistleblowers realized that his experimental surgeries were leaving behind a trail of patients who kept dying, starting with an explosive article in The New York Times in Nov. 2014 detailing how the doctor known as a "Miracle Worker" had been accused of misconduct in his experimental transplants.

“He was a very cunning, skilled manipulator and that's how he was able to pull the wool over so many people's eyes, not just mine,” says Alexander, who details how she became caught up in his web of lies in the new Netflix docuseries, Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife.

“We're talking about famous institutions, doctors, scientists, all kinds of people all over the world who funded him, who worked on papers with him, or operated with him. He's just an incredibly skilled pathological liar,” she says.

Looking back, she says, “He literally swept me off my feet in a way that I have never been swept off my feet before, which in hindsight was a red flag. It was classic love bombing. It was romance on steroids.”

Surgeries Ending in Deaths

Alexander wasn't the only victim of Macchiarini's cons. The riveting Netflix docuseries goes in-depth about the miraculous transplants  the so-called “super surgeon,” now 65, was performing all over the globe, starting in 2011 when he inserted the first synthetic trachea, bathed in the patient’s own stem cells, into a patient at Stockholm’s famed Karolinska Institute.

The Swiss-born surgeon rocketed to international superstardom in the medical world until the truth started to trickle out about his experimental transplants: that several of his patients ended up dying, according to biomedical researcher Leonid Schneider. 

Many more had complications following their procedures, which he performed at the Karolinska Institute, which hands out Nobel prizes in Medicine, as well as in Italy, Russia, Spain and the United States. 

Questioned about the risky procedures, which were allegedly never tested on animals, Macchiarini can be seen defending his work in the Netflix documentary, saying people die with experimental procedures. He has denied any criminal wrongdoing, according to the Associated Press.

But several of Macchiarini's patients died after their transplant surgeries, according to the Associated Press.

He was fired from the Karolinska Institute in March 2016 on accusations of breaching medical ethics after allegedly falsifying his resume and misrepresenting his work, the Associated Press reports. 

In June, the Svea Court of Appeal found him guilty of gross assault against three of his patients and sentenced him to two-and-a-half years in prison.

The judges ruled that Macchiarini “acted with criminal intent” despite his optimism about the outcome, Science reports.

Evidence showed that he knew “of the risk that the procedures would cause the patients physical injuries and suffering and that he was indifferent to the realization of these risks,” Science reports.

Viveka Lang, one of the appeals judges on the case, said, “Was he aware of the potential risk, and did he do [the surgeries] anyway?” Science reports.

At a press conference with his lawyers after the ruling, Macchiarini said he wanted to help patients who had no other options, Science reports.

“The intention of harming is the most awful accusation that you can make to a doctor,” he said. “In the operating room we were 20, 25 people. What surprises me is, why I am here alone?” 

He and his attorneys appealed to the Swedish Supreme Court, which in October upheld the Court of Appeals’ verdict and the sentence. Also in October, The Lancet, a prominent medical journal, retracted two of Macchiarini’s articles.

His lawyer did not respond to PEOPLE's request for comment. The Sweden Supreme Court referred PEOPLE to the Swedish Police Authority, which did not immediately respond to requests for information.

Learning to Love Again

Today, eight years after she ended things with Macchiarini, Alexander has moved on, working as executive producer and showrunner of the true crime series, Crimes Gone Viral, which airs on Investigation Discovery, and spending time with her now 20-year-old daughter.

She is also trying her hand again at love, albeit more carefully this time.

“I am now in a very serious relationship with a lovely man. He is very supportive and patient with me.”

Still, that doesn’t mean she can forget all that Macchiarini did to her.

In 2018, she served as executive producer of the documentary, He Lied About Everything, which premiered on Investigation Discovery part to serve as a cautionary tale to others.

“I don't think you can go through something like this and not have trust issues,” she says. “It takes time. That's advice I'm always giving to women. You have to learn to trust yourself again before you can really trust anyone else again.

“He took enough from me. He caused enough damage. So I just have worked very hard at just being who I was before I met him. I think I've succeeded at that. And that was important to me because I just didn't want to give him that too.”

Macchiarini is subject of the Netflix docuseries Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife, streaming now, and Peacock's upcoming Dr. Death season 2, starring Mandy Moore as Alexander and Édgar Ramírez as Macchiarini, premiering Dec. 21.