Attorneys bought stolen medical records so that they could file

insurance claims, newspaper reports

Lawyers and health care clinics paid illegal kickbacks

to thieving couple, according to federal indictment

Have they no shame? A Coral Gables couple has been accused – again – of arranging the theft of hospital patient records and selling them to personal injury attorneys and health care clinics.

“There seems to be a complete lack of ethics here,” said Richard Parrillo, Sr., founder and CEO of United Automobile Insurance Company. “The couple apparently sold confidential records to health care clinics and attorneys that paid kickbacks based on how much they won from insurers. If those allegations are true, people should go to prison and attorneys should be permanently disbarred.”

Ruben E. Rodriguez, 61, and wife Maria Victoria Suarez, 52, were indicted on charges of selling stolen computerized patients’ records to several attorneys, according to a March 8, 2010, article in the Miami Herald. The newspaper reported that personal injury attorneys paid the couple “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for the referrals after settling injury claims.

Personal injury protection (PIP) insurance covers 80 percent of an injured person's medical bills and 60 percent of lost wages up to $10,000. The Florida Division of Insurance Fraud estimates more than 80 percent of all PIP insurance claims involve some aspect of fraud in connection with unrelated, unnecessary and excessive treatment.

This type of illegal patient solicitation has permeated Florida’s PIP system for years.  From purchasing police reports to patient hospital records, personal injury attorneys and health care clinics will stop at nothing to lure unsuspecting patients in their doors. 

Among the lawyers suspected of working with the couple is G. Walter Araujo of Hialeah. He has not been formally charged, but the Herald reports that the Florida Bar says it is investigating him for potential ethics violations. Those came about in a previous federal case against Rodriguez and Suarez in which they were accused of stealing hospital patient records. Rodriguez admitted to a federal court that he sold the records of hundreds of patients treated for, among other things, car-crash injuries.

In the latest indictments, federal prosecutors told the Herald that the couple worked with an ambulance company employee to steal hospital records. Those were sold to health care clinics and lawyers that filed claims for the patients. The FBI began investigating and prosecutors handed down indictments.

“The people accused – and those yet to be charged -- have no sense of decency,” Parrillo said. “They have no respect for people’s privacy, for the law, or for the court system. How much did the attorneys involved rip off honest drivers and insurance companies? How many trials were frauds? We may never know.”

ABOUT UNITED AUTO COURTS REPORT

Florida drivers are paying some of the highest insurance premiums in the country as a result of the fraud being committed by sometimes organized rings of runners, healthcare providers and PIP attorneys that has been milking the system since the inception of Florida’s no-fault auto insurance system. This has caused most insurance companies writing minimum limits auto insurance to go out of business, making this type of insurance less available and much more expensive.

What’s more, the Office of the Department of Insurance Regulation has stated that more than 80% of all automobile accident injury claims are in fact fraudulent.

United Automobile Insurance Company has been at the forefront of fighting this monumental fraud problem in the Florida Legislature and in county, circuit and appellate courts. But this battle has been very expensive and seemingly unwinnable in part to what the company sees as an uneven playing field in Miami-Dade and Broward County courts.

The United Auto Courts Report blog (http://www.unitedautocourtsreport.com/blog) updates its readers on the cases, verdicts and appellate decisions that impact the state of Florida’s automobile insurance market.

ABOUT UNITED AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE CO.

Founded in 1989, United Automobile Insurance Co. is a property and casualty insurance company specializing in automobile insurance. The company is committed to providing its agents and their customers a quality product with state-of-the-art processing and claims service. Through its affiliates, UAIC provides a variety of insurance-related services including premium finance, claims processing and advanced on-line sales products.

UAIC, its executives and employees are involved in the communities the company serves. They support a host of organizations such as The Mike Lowell Foundation, Miami Children’s Hospital, Children’s Home Society, Heartsight Miami, The Boys and Girls Club of Broward County, St. Jude Hospital, Do The Right Thing, Florida’s Children First, President’s Fest in the Park, Aspira, The PASS Program and Switchboard Miami. Additionally, UAIC supports law enforcement programs, training and has funded the Fallen Officer Memorial in Tropical Park.

UAIC offers auto insurance in 12 states and continues to expand its reach each year. The key to the company’s growth and success is its commitment to providing quality service to its agents and customers, disciplined underwriting, and fast and fair claims handling. For more information, visit www.uaig.net.

CONTACT:  Richard Parrillo, Sr. of United Automobile Insurance Company at (305) 940-7299 or via email at stoppipfraudnow@gmail.com.

Coral Gables couple again accused of stealing, selling patient records

A Coral Gables couple are indicted a second time on charges of stealing the private records of patients to sell to lawyers for personal-injury claims.

BY JAY WEAVER

jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

Last year, they were charged with running a racket to pilfer patient records from Jackson Memorial Hospital to sell to lawyers for personal-injury claims.

Now have been indicted again for paying an ambulance-company employee to steal information on patients transported to Miami-Dade hospitals and healthcare clinics. That theft scheme dates all the way back to 1995, according to an indictment filed last week.

In both federal cases, the Coral Gables couple is accused of brokering the stolen computer records of patients' names, addresses, telephone numbers and medical diagnoses to several attorneys in exchange for kickback payments. The lawyers paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars for the referrals after settling injury claims, authorities say.

Among the suspected personal-injury lawyers: G. Walter Araujo. The Hialeah lawyer has not been charged in the federal prosecution but this past week, the Florida Bar confirmed it was investigating him for potential ethics violations in connection with the first federal case involving the theft of JMH patient records.

Araujo, who was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1997, did not return calls for comment.

Under Bar rules, lawyers are allowed to advertise on TV and billboards and in the Yellow Pages but are prohibited from soliciting clients by phone or at their home or in the hospital. They're also prohibited from sharing their legal fees with nonlawyers.

According to court records in the JMH case, one unidentified personal-injury attorney wrote 27 checks totaling $85,250 to a shell company incorporated by Rodriguez as kickback payments for the patient referrals between 2006 and 2009.

It was not clear if that lawyer was Araujo, a graduate of the University of Miami School of Law.

Rodriguez, 61, whose bond was revoked last year after he allegedly tampered with grand jury witnesses, will be back in federal court Tuesday on the new charges of conspiracy, computer fraud and identity theft. His attorney, Philip Horowitz, declined to comment about the case.

His wife, Suarez, 52, who is free on bail, will also be back in court that day. Her lawyer, Joaquin Mendez, could not be reached for comment.

The couple's criminal prosecution, headed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Curtis, has taken some unusual turns.

SET TO PLEAD GUILTY

In January, Rodriguez was set to plead guilty to the first conspiracy indictment, which said he stole JMH patient records by paying a hospital employee for the private information. But Rodriguez backed out of the plea agreement on the day of his court hearing.

Although he signed the agreement, it is no longer valid because he never pleaded guilty to it in court.

In a companion statement to the plea, Rodriguez admitted that he paid JMH ultrasound technician Rebecca Garcia $1,000 a month for the records of hundreds of patients treated for slip-and-fall accidents, car-crash injuries, gunshot wounds and stabbings. The payments were made between December 2006 and February 2009.

Rodriguez came to know Garcia through his wife, Suarez, a cosmetologist. Garcia, fired from her long-term job at JMH, is serving a 10-month prison sentence.

Rodriguez referred the injured patients to one unidentified personal-injury lawyer, who paid him referral fees of 35 percent on each successful claim for damages, according to court records.

BUSINESS DEAL

The latest indictment accuses Rodriguez of engineering a similar scam with a Miami-Dade employee of the national ambulance company American Medical Response. He first approached the employee, identified as ``co-conspirator A'' in the indictment, in 1995 to discuss the ``business proposition'' of stealing patient records.

The employee ``first accessed and obtained personal identification information'' of injured patients transported by AMR in August of that year, the indictment says.

Both Rodriguez and his wife made at least four payments of $1,000 to $2,000 to the AMR employee from December 2006 to April 2009, according to the indictment. The couple, in turn, supplied the patient records to personal-injury lawyers and healthcare clinics seeking business.

The unidentified AMR employee was fired by the Colorado-based company in February. The company issued a statement saying it was recently notified of the FBI investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in Miami.

``The alleged behavior is in violation of specific company policies and the employee was terminated,'' AMR said in the statement, adding that it ``cooperated fully with federal authorities.''