Last year, they were charged with running a racket to pilfer patient records from Jackson Memorial Hospital to sell to lawyers for personal-injury claims.
Now Ruben E. Rodriguez and wife Maria Victoria Suarez have been indicted again for paying an ambulance-company employee to steal information on patients transported to Miami-Dade hospitals and healthcare clinics. That theft scheme dates all the way back to 1995, according to an indictment filed last week.
In both federal cases, the Coral Gables couple are accused of brokering the stolen computer records of patients' names, addresses, telephone numbers and medical diagnoses to several attorneys in exchange for kickback payments. The lawyers paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars for the referrals after settling injury claims, authorities say.
Among the suspected personal-injury lawyers: G. Walter Araujo. The Hialeah lawyer has not been charged in the federal prosecution, but this past week the Florida Bar confirmed it was investigating him for potential ethics violations in connection with the first federal case involving the theft of JMH patient records
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Feds Indict Couple Again in Theft, Sale of Patients' Data
4 comments:
This is a scary thought. I have heard of it happening to hospitals before, maybe five years ago. I see protection hasn't improved as it should.
"The Sunshine State" More corruption in their legal arena. How is one supposed to get justice in the "Sunshine State" when many of the Florida lawyers are crooks?
Very scary!
The lawyers should face a higher penalty. They're the ones who cooked up the scheme!
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