Miami Herald - November 5, 2008
Jay Weaver, jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

Ronald Harris, 58, wrote prescriptions to bill Medicare for an obsolete treatment that was not provided to patients with the virus that causes AIDS, according to court records. The patients received cash kickbacks in exchange for letting the Miami physician bill the federal health insurance program with their Medicare numbers.

In August, Harris pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge as the medical director for Physicians Med-Care in Miami and Physicians Health Med-Care in Hallandale Beach. The two HIV clinics submitted $26.2 million in false claims to Medicare between 2002 and 2004.

THREE BROTHERS

They were among a dozen local clinics controlled by Carlos, Luis and Jose Benitez, three Cuban immigrant brothers who were charged in a separate indictment alleging they filed $119 million in false HIV therapy claims with Medicare. Before their indictment was unsealed in June, the brothers fled to the Dominican Republic and then to Cuba, where they have been jailed on immigration violations since mid-September.

But the FBI and other U.S. authorities have been unable to secure their release because of a lack of formal relations with the Cuban government.

Harris is among more than a dozen physicians, nurses, administrators and assistants who have pleaded guilty in the sprawling Medicare fraud conspiracy.

U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga ordered Harris, who is currently serving a federal prison term on a separate prescription drug-ring conviction, to repay about $10 million to Medicare.

Also on Tuesday, Mariela Rodriguez, administrator for another Benitez-controlled HIV clinic, was sentenced to almost six years in prison for her supporting role in a similar Medicare scam involving kickbacks to patients. U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno ordered her to repay $8.2 million to Medicare.

Rodriguez, 40, of Miami, had pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud Medicare and lying to a federal grand jury. In 2003, Rodriguez and a convicted co-conspirator, Aisa Perera, opened an HIV clinic for the Benitez brothers called Saint Jude Rehab Center in Miami.

According to her plea agreement, the clinic submitted about $11.3 million in phony claims to Medicare for HIV-infusion treatments that were neither medically necessary nor administered to patients.

LYING TO GRAND JURY

Rodriguez also admitted to lying to the federal grand jury in July 2004.

Asked whether Saint Jude's patients were recruited off the street and paid kickbacks, she told the jury: "I have no knowledge of that."

Among the patients: Alexander McCray, 40, who has a long Florida record of drug-possession arrests.

McCray, who is HIV-positive and eligible for Medicare, told The Miami Herald that he collected tens of thousands of dollars from Saint Jude and other Benitez brothers' clinics -- money he has used to pay for his crack-cocaine habit.

Since 2001, McCray's number was used by various HIV clinics across Miami-Dade to bill Medicare more than $1.1 million for bogus claims, according to federal records. McCray has not been charged as a "professional" Medicare patient.

HIV therapy, which entails intravenous drips of medication to boost a patient's immune system, has been replaced almost everywhere but South Florida by more effective antiretroviral drugs taken orally.

Yet Medicare has continued to allow the outdated HIV infusion services and to pay hundreds of millions of dollars yearly for the treatments because the agency still considers them "reasonable and necessary."

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