Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - An unlicensed doctor who allegedly injected immigrants with a saline solution he claimed was a vaccine faces more than 100 criminal counts, prosecutors said Thursday.

Stephen Brian Turner, 51, has been charged with 106 felonies for allegedly providing fake immigration medical exams while unlicensed. Charges include practicing medicine without a license, mishandling blood samples and felony grand theft, according to prosecutors.

"Instead of helping these people, this defendant allegedly manipulated them for his own personal profit," San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris said in a statement.

Turner was being held in county jail Thursday on $1.45 million bail after being arrested the day before at his Hayward home.

Prosecutors claim Turner stole $247,000 from 1,417 victims, most of whom thought they were receiving legitimate immigration medical exams, Harris said. Immigrants need to get routine physicals and vaccinations to become citizens.

Investigators said in court documents that Turner injected patients with saline rather than vaccines for illnesses like mumps and rubella. Many of the patients visited Turner in a clinic in the city's Mission District, a hub for Latino immigrants, prosecutors said. He also is accused of drawing blood for AIDS and syphilis tests that weren't performed.

Prosecutors said Turner surrendered his California medical license in 1998, but continued seeing patients until late last year.

Herman Franck, Turner's lawyer, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Authorities are encouraging former patients to have medical exams performed again by another doctor.

Turner previously pleaded no contest to charges that he masturbated in front of two young girls in 1984 while a radiology resident at the University of Southern California, according to medical board records. He was later convicted in Alameda County in 1993 of indecent exposure for an incident near the University of California, Berkeley, campus, board records show.