“Been” for “being”

The sentence below is taken from a letter written by apparently a medical doctor and published by a popular English daily.

It is the experience of many private physicians that often such patients are afraid to return the excess or unused medicine for fear of been penalised.

Obviously “for fear of been penalised” should have been “for fear of being penalised”.

Such anomaly seems to occur quite frequently apart from this and those other cases mentioned in my earlier posting herein on February 4, 2008.