Pleasant Grove man's life built on years of lies

PLEASANT GROVE — When Jeff Robinson received a call last January from a family questioning the cause of their mother's death, he didn't know what he was getting into.

Once he started researching the background of a 53-year-old Pleasant Grove doctor and attorney, Robinson said, he and others unraveled years and years of lie after lie after lie.

He compared the man's life to the movie "Catch Me If You Can" but said the movie "paled in comparison."

Martin Joseph MacNeill's lies allegedly started years ago when he signed up for the Army at age 17, Robinson, the chief investigator for the Utah County Attorney's Office, told the Deseret News. MacNeill was put on disability leave two years later when a medical officer deemed him a "latent schizoprenic" with "other mental and psychological infirmities," according to documents Utah County investigators obtained in their research.

He was convicted of three theft, burglary and forgery felonies in California in 1978 and served time in jail. Then MacNeill falsified transcripts and lied on applications to get into two different medical schools — and later to Brigham Young University Law School, according to Robinson.

He was licensed as a physician in California and then in Utah where he worked at the BYU Health Center for several years until he became the clinical director of the Utah State Developmental Center in American Fork in 2000.

"Things were not adding up," Robinson said. "He was not the physician he was saying he was."

Investigators found records indicating that MacNeill graduated from Saint Martin's University in Washington in psychology and sociology, but 65 of the credits he attained were supposedly from the Army's extension program and their validity has been questioned, Robinson said. After contacting colleges that MacNeill attended, Robinson said investigators discovered that MacNeill tampered with his transcripts to indicate that he graduated in psychology and biology and that he received higher grades than he actually did.

Family members told investigators they found a stamp with the Saint Martin's University seal in the back of his car, along with high-quality stationery, Robinson said.

With these allegedly false transcripts, MacNeill was able to get into a medical school in Guadalajara, Mexico, while he was still on probation from his felony charges in 1978.