Mission, Texas (Gray News) – A doctor in Texas was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being found guilty of having diagnosed patients with illnesses they did not have to finance his sumptuous lifestyle.
According to the Ministry of JusticeDr. Jorge Zamora-Quezada, MD, was found guilty of a conspiracy chief to commit health care fraud, seven Health care fraud chiefs and a conspiracy chief to hinder justice.
He was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release.
In addition to his prison mandate, Zamora-Quezada was sentenced to renouncing more than $ 28 million, including 13 real estate properties, a private jet and a Maserati Granturismo.
Zamora-Quezada has led a health care fraud program involving more than $ 118 million in false complaints and the payment of more than $ 28 million by insurers due to wrongly diagnosing with patients with chronic diseases to charge tests and treatments that patients did not need.
Officials said he had done so for two decades.
The Doj said Zamora-Quezada was a rheumatologist working in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, near the Mexican border.
The 68 -year -old has also falsified patient files to support false diagnostics.
False diagnoses made believe that they had living and incurable conditions which required regular treatment in his office. These unnecessary treatments included a variety of injections, infusions, X -rays, MRI and other procedures.
Because they took medication and treatments they did not need, many patients underwent serious side effects, including strokes, jaw necrosis, hair loss, liver damage and pain so serious that basic tasks of daily life, such as bath, cooking and driving, have become difficult.
As a patient testified, “being constantly in bed and being unable to get up from bed alone, and to be pumped with drugs, I did not have the impression that my life had a meaning.”
A mother described how she thought that her child served as a “laboratory rat” and others described the abandonment of plans for the university or feeling as if they “lived a life in the body of an elderly person”.
Other rheumatologists in the region who have treated patients who have already seen Zamora-Quezada said it was immediately obvious that they did not have the diseases and conditions they had been diagnosed with.
A doctor testified to the test that for “most patients”, it was “obvious that the patient had no rheumatoid arthritis”.
Former employees also testified that Zamora-Quezada imposed strict quotas for procedures.
An employee said he had launched paper paper for not having generated enough unnecessary procedures.
Other employees said that he had hired them because they were under J-1 visas and their immigration status could be compromised if they lost their jobs.
He also dismissed employees who challenged him.
“This case was not only a concern to us because of the financial loss – the physical and emotional damage suffered by the patients and their families were alarming and deep,” said San Antonio Field Office Special Agent Aaron Tapp. “We hope that this important sentence will help to close the many victims in this case.”
Copyright 2025 Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved.