Miami Herald - December 19, 2008
Jay Weaver, jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

A one-time physician's assistant who was the right-hand man to three brothers charged in a $119 million Medicare racket was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in federal prison after pleading guilty this fall.

Thomas McKenzie, who taught doctors how to prescribe HIV therapy at Miami-Dade clinics to defraud the national healthcare system, had hoped to receive an 11-year sentence recommended by prosecutors.

But U.S. District Judge Alan Gold said he didn't think the lower sentence went far enough to deter other offenders in Miami-Dade, which is known as the nation's capital of Medicare fraud.

Gold said he was following the example of the South Florida district's chief federal judge, Federico Moreno, who sentenced a doctor convicted of Medicare fraud to 30 years in prison on Wednesday after rejecting the prosecution's recommendation of 22 years.

'UNNECESSARY'

Gold said McKenzie's role in the scam was of "great magnitude" because he used his expertise to train doctors to prescribe "medically unnecessary" HIV-infusion treatments for 500 patients who received kickbacks from the clinics.

"It is a serious crime," Gold said. "It takes away millions of dollars from those in the community who are in need of Medicare services."

McKenzie, a 53-year-old Nicaraguan native, is among a growing group of convicted defendants -- doctors, administrators and assistants -- who are pleading guilty in exchange for providing prosecutors inside information about the alleged Medicare racket built by Carlos, Luis and Jose Benitez.

The Cuban brothers emigrated in 1995 and became U.S. citizens five years later, just before launching their alleged conspiracy to rip off the taxpayer-funded health insurance program. They fled to Cuba before prosecutors unsealed an indictment in June charging them and McKenzie in the sprawling Medicare-fraud case.

The Benitez brothers are accused of not only defrauding Medicare but also laundering their dirty profits through sham companies and investing much of it in real estate and other assets in the Dominican Republic. U.S. authorities have been seizing their properties in that country and say the brothers are being held in jail by the Cuban government on immigration violations.

McKenzie, who was recruited by the brothers, admitted he played a central role in their alleged criminal enterprise, which collected $84 million from Medicare based on at least $119 million in false claims for HIV-infusion treatments.

'SORRY AND ASHAMED'

McKenzie's personal take over three years was $1.3 million. He told the judge he was "sorry and ashamed" for his misconduct and accepted "full responsibility."

"The Medicare system is what my mother and many members of my church depend on for their medical treatment," said McKenzie, whose sentencing was attended by his 90-year-old mother, wife, three children and some 30 members of Prince of Peace Moravian Church in northwest Miami-Dade.

In September, McKenzie pleaded guilty to one count of healthcare-fraud conspiracy and one count of submitting false Medicare claims, but he began providing authorities critical information about the Benitez brothers' dozen Miami-Dade clinics last June.

McKenzie became a vital witness in the prosecution of Dr. Ana Alvarez-Jacinto, a physician at one of the clinics. She was convicted at trial in October and on Wednesday sentenced to 30 years in prison -- one of the longest Medicare-fraud sentences in history.

McKenzie admitted that from December 2001 to April 2004 he trained physicians such as Alvarez-Jacinto how to fabricate the clinics' medical records to support false Medicare claims for expensive HIV-infusion services. But the HIV patients, who received up to $150 per visit for letting the clinics use their Medicare numbers, didn't need the treatments because their blood platelets were not low enough.

McKenzie, who had studied medicine in Central America before leaving for the United States in the early 1980s, confessed he oversaw the clinics' records for HIV-therapy treatments to ensure the services appeared legitimate to Medicare-claims contractors. The patients, regardless of their medical diagnoses, either received the same low doses of the treatments or none at all, according to court records.

'POTEMKIN VILLAGES'

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Neal called the brothers' clinics "Potemkin villages" -- designed to look real but actually fake.

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, healthcare experts say.

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