Medicaid-fraud arrests have Miami-Orlando link [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Medicaid-fraud arrests have Miami-Orlando link

By Pamela J. Johnson | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted November 1, 2003

State officials have arrested five Miami residents who operated a dental clinic in Orlando, accusing them of receiving more than $715,000 in a Medicaid scam involving poor children throughout Central Florida, state Attorney General Charlie Crist announced Friday.

Arrested were John Anthony Rubio, 31; Sonia Bonilla Guzman, 43; her sister Anamaria Bonilla Mendez, 38; Gustavo Adolfo Fernandez, 35; and his wife, Iliana Martin-Fernandez, 34.

After a two-year investigation, officers of the Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit made the arrests Thursday in Miami.

Officials say dentists Guzman and Mendez maintained practices in Miami but would travel to Orlando on weekends to run a clinic at 1723 S. Rio Grande Ave. They say Rubio and Fernandez traveled in a van to public housing areas in Central Florida soliciting Medicaid-eligible children with offers of free food.

The children, some as young as 2, were then taken to the Orlando clinic in the van, according to Crist. The children's teeth were X-rayed by Rubio or Fernandez, neither of whom is licensed to operate dental X-ray equipment, Crist said.

"It's especially troubling that they would use Florida's neediest citizens as pawns in their scam," Crist said. (snip/...)

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-locdentalscam01110103nov01,0,4192154.story

Is this the Miami version of "Taking it to the Streets?"