How do you know if your doctor is a real physician? You check his credentials, usually hanging up on the wall of his office. In Puerto Rico this may not be good enough. Federal authorities arrested a total of 91 people, 88 of whom were “doctors” in a scam that provided people, who were not able to pass their certification exams, with fake credentials.
Members of the island’s medical licensing board allegedly recycled old, passing exams under the name of the failed candidates between 2001 and 2005, according to the indictments. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Jose Ruiz, patterns of repeated test scores suggest the cheating began much earlier than first suspected.
One man who earned a medical degree in Spain failed the exam 16 times between 1974 and 2001 before he was granted a medical license in 2002, according to the indictment. The defendants face charges including mail fraud and making false statements to Medicare. If convicted, most face prison sentences of five to 20 years, said interim U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez.
“It was a pretty blatant scheme,” said Ruiz, who added that investigators were trying to locate rosters from before 2001. “We believe this has happened before.”
This is how the scheme worked: An intermediary would approach a candidate who had failed to pass the test and offer to connect them to members of the licensing board who could help. In some cases as much as $10,000 would change hands. Yolanda Rodriguez, a former board secretary who also was indicted, allegedly received the exams from the intermediaries, cut-and-pasted passages from passing exams, and photocopied the doctored exams for submission as authentic versions, according to court documents.
Milton Carrero, the board’s current president, who is not under suspicion, said:
“There were people inside who defrauded the confidence of everyone, there is no doubt that changes at the licensing board are happening and will continue to happen.”
Rosa Perez Perdomo, Puerto Rico’s Health Department secretary, called it “a very unfortunate situation,” but said the fraudulent doctors’ patients would have no shortage of alternatives among legitimate health care providers in Puerto Rico, where about 10,000 doctors serve a population of 4 million. At least five U.S. states recognize Puerto Rican medical licenses — Arizona, Florida, New York, Texas and Virginia — but Perdomo said none of the suspects were known to have practiced medicine on the U.S. mainland, according to Puerto Rico’s medical licensing board. The doctors were mostly Puerto Ricans who studied medicine in the Dominican Republic, Mexico or Cuba.
Gilberto Rodriguez, who is himself a doctor, and the father of one of the accused, was jailed on a witness tampering charge. He allegedly threatened to kill anyone who cooperated with investigators. A notice taped to the door of his shuttered medical practice in a San Juan strip mall said he was away “on vacation” until Monday.
If the investigators get their way, it will be many, many Mondays before Rodriguez returns.
