However Seitz didn't stop there she also ordered Alvarez-Jacinto to pay $90,000 in forfeiture and $5,116,366 in restitution for submitting and causing the submission of approximately $7 million worth of fraudulent claims to the Medicare program.
Alvarez-Jacinto pleaded guilty on June 12, 2007, to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. From June 2003 until November 2003, Alvarez-Jacinto was employed as medical director at Saint Jude Rehab Center, a medical clinic that purported to specialize in treating patients with HIV.
During that period, Alvarez-Jacinto authorized and approved the use of the drug WinRho, along with a mix of various vitamin supplements, for each HIV patient he was seeing, knowing that the HIV patients did not need WinRho and that the drug could actually harm them.
In total, Alvarez-Jacinto approved over $7 million worth of fraudulent medical bills, which were submitted to Medicare for payment.
Medicare ended up paying about $5 million of those bills to Saint Jude Rehab Center. Alvarez-Jacinto was paid approximately $90,000 for his role in approving the fraudulent bills.
Law enforcement authorities under the mandate of the Medicare strike force teams have indicted approximately 80 cases and 120 defendants in Miami-Dade County alone.
