A Texas doctor has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for orchestrating one of the most egregious medical fraud schemes in modern US history making $118 million in false claims.
Jorge Zamora-Quezada, 68, a once-respected rheumatologist, was convicted of diagnosing hundreds of healthy patients with a life-altering disease they never had – all to bankroll his empire of jets, beachfront properties, and European sports cars.
Zamora-Quezada’s criminal scheme centered around one of deception as set about falsely diagnosing people with rheumatoid arthritis, an incurable autoimmune disease that affects joints but can be treated with various medications and chemotherapy drugs that involve toxins.
Armed with falsified test results and fabricated symptoms, he administered toxic treatments, including chemotherapy infusions, steroids, and other aggressive drugs to people who were otherwise young and healthy.
‘Dr. Zamora-Quezada funded his luxurious lifestyle for two decades by traumatizing his patients, abusing his employees, lying to insurers, and stealing taxpayer money,’ said Matthew R. Galeotti, head of the DOJ’s Criminal Division.
‘His depraved conduct represents a profound betrayal of trust toward vulnerable patients who depend on care and integrity from their doctors.’
The doctor is thought to have particularly made children, the disabled and elderly patients a target.
‘Constantly being in bed and being unable to get up from bed alone, and being pumped with medication, I didn’t feel like my life had any meaning,’ one devastated patient told the court.
Jorge Zamora-Quezada, 68, a once-respected rheumatologist, has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for orchestrating one of the most egregious medical fraud schemes in history
Zamora-Quezada used the profits to construct a sprawling real estate portfolio spanning the US and Mexico, purchase a million dollar private jet, above, and drive off in a Maserati
According to the Department of Justice, patients who should have been thriving were instead left with liver damage, hair loss, strokes, necrosis of the jaw, and chronic pain so severe that some couldn’t even lift a spoon or walk unassisted.
‘For most patients, it was obvious that they did not have rheumatoid arthritis,’ one stunned rheumatologist testified during the 25-day trial.
The diagnosis, in many cases, had been conjured out of thin air.
The disgraced doctor would order a number of ‘fraudulent, repetitive, and excessive medical procedures on patients in order to increase revenue.’
All told, Zamora-Quezada’s scheme siphoned more than $28 million from Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, and private insurers like Blue Cross Blue Shield.
He used the profits to construct a sprawling real estate portfolio spanning the US and Mexico, purchase a million dollar private jet, and drive off in a Maserati GranTurismo, both of which were branded with his initials ‘ZQ’.
He also owned multiple residential properties, including two penthouses and a condo in Mexico and another condo in Aspen, Colorado. He owned several homes and commercial buildings in Texas, court records show.
And while his patients lay in bed, ravaged by unnecessary drugs, Zamora-Quezada referred to himself as ‘La Eminencia’ – The Eminence -and flew across borders in style.
Zamora-Quezada has been ordered to forfeit over $28 million, his jet, his Maserati, and his entire real estate empire consisting of 13 properties including some luxury beachfront homes
Having been convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, seven counts of health care fraud, and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, Zamora-Quezada will now spend the next decade behind bars.
He has been ordered to forfeit over $28 million, his jet, his Maserati, and his entire real estate empire consisting of 13 properties.
‘Today’s sentence is not just a punishment – it’s a warning,’ Galeotti said. ‘Medical professionals who harm Americans for personal enrichment will be aggressively pursued and held accountable.’
Zamora-Quezada’s victims have come forward during the trial to explain how their former doctor would diagnose them with degenerative diseases that other doctors would later reveal they never had.
One of his victims was Maria Zapata, 70, who went to see the doctor years earlier because of a pain in her knee.
The doctor told her she had arthritis and gave her injections that would ‘strengthen the cartilage’ in her knee.
Her husband then asked the doctor why he was administering so many injections, but he reassured them the treatment would help.
Former employees also told of being sent to a dilapidated barn to attempt to retrieve records
The files were saturated with feces and urine, rodents, and termites that infested not only the records but also the structure itself
However, there was discoloration on Zapata’s leg and other doctors were concerned with the course of the treatment before finally a doctor told Zapata she never even had arthritis.
Another patient of Dr Zamora-Quezada, Nora Rodriguez, said that that he yelled at her and threw her out of his office after she questioned his treatment.
‘He kept getting upset when I was asking him why I was feeling worse and not getting better,’ she said.
‘He yelled and told me, ”you are no longer my patient; get out of this office,”’ Rodriguez said.
Inside his Mission, Texas clinic, Zamora-Quezada ran what prosecutors described as a ‘culture of fear.’
He hired foreign staffers on temporary visas, who fearing deportation wouldn’t question his unethical orders.
One former worker told how he threw a paperweight at them after failing to generate enough unnecessary procedures.
When insurance companies requested patient files, employees were told to make them ‘appear.’
When real patients weren’t available for records, he used staffers as fake models for ultrasounds.
Many records weren’t stored in proper facilities but rather dumped in a rundown barn infested in the Rio Grande Valley that was infested with rodents and termites, some covered in animal feces and urine.
He threatened employees, abused his status, and manipulated desperate people who had come to him for care.
‘He took advantage of the very system he swore to uphold,’ prosecutors argued in court.
For his victims, many say the damage cannot be undone. Among the most harrowing testimonies came from parents of children subjected to unnecessary treatments.
One mother compared her child’s experience under Zamora-Quezada’s care to that of a science experiment: ‘He used my child like a lab rat,’ she said, describing endless injections and pills prescribed for a disease that never existed.
Others told the court they lived for years under the shadow of a false diagnosis, believing their dreams had been crushed with not much longer left to live.
Some described how the devastating diagnosis saw them abandoning plans for college or feeling like they were ‘living a life in the body of an elderly person.’
Zamora-Quezada’s had faced some public scrutiny in the past.
In 2006, he was accused of prescribing a drug ‘inconsistent with public health and welfare’ and of ‘billing for treatment that was improper, unreasonable, or medically or clinically unnecessary.’
He later settled for a public reprimand by the Texas Medical Board in 2009 and was fined $30,000 but able to continue his practice.
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