A Texas doctor received $ 50 million, prescribing unnecessary procedures to patients.

Maria Zapata went to Dr. Jorge Zamora-Quesada a little more than five years ago because of pain in her knee. The rheumatologist told the woman that she had arthritis and that he would give her injections to “strengthen the cartilage” in her knee.

Фото: Depositphotos

To the patient's husband's question about whether his wife really needs such a number of injections, the doctor assured that the treatment will definitely help, writes CNN.

But 70-year-old Zapata from McAllen (Texas), noted that the treatment did not just not help, but perhaps worsened the situation: the skin on her legs began to lose its normal color. Other doctors expressed concern about this treatment, and the couple's family doctor told the woman that she did not have arthritis.

According to a federal investigation, Zapata was not the only patient for whom Zamora-Quesada had prescribed treatment that was not needed.

The doctor was charged in a fraud case that led to payments to 240 million dollars for unnecessary treatment, and the doctor directly received 50 millions of this money.

The news of the arrest of the doctor quickly spread, and the victims began to share their stories of visits to this doctor.

The Justice Department reported that the rheumatologist even prescribed chemotherapy and other types of dangerous treatment to patients who did not need them, all in order to ensure a rich lifestyle for themselves by paying for them. The investigation concluded that the doctor deliberately made false diagnoses, prescribed fictitious courses of treatment and wrote out prescriptions for expensive drugs that the patient did not need for financial gain.

In addition to fraud, the doctor was also charged with money laundering.

According to the indictment, Zamora-Quesada prescribed too many procedures to the patients or completely unnecessary treatment to get more money from them. If patients questioned his procedures and diagnoses, he asked them to leave his clinic.

44-year-old Nora Rodriguez said that Zamora-Quesada had kicked her out of the hospital after she asked why all the drugs he prescribed did not work.

“He shouted, ‘You are no longer my patient, get out of this office,’” the woman said.

At the request of patients to provide them with their medical records to show other doctors, Zamora-Quesada tried to find ways to hide these records so that other rheumatologists would not see them.

He even tried to hide them from Medicarehiding paper in a dilapidated building in the valley of the Rio Grande.

The building where the doctor hid the records of his patients.
Photo: FBI

The doctor laundered the received money through an extensive international scheme. casa de cambio and sent them to various accounts in financial institutions in Mexico.

The Department of Justice is petitioning to confiscate a private doctor’s plane worth a million dollars a car Maserati and some other luxuries.

Zamora-Quesada owned a fleet of luxury cars and purchased several expensive real estate properties, including two penthouses in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; condos in Aspen, Colorado and in Punta Mita, Mexico. He also owned several houses and commercial buildings in Texas.

The FBI is asking patients who were treated by this doctor between January 2000 and May 2018 to call the hotline at 1-833-432-4873 or email [email protected].

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