Miami doctor gets 5-year prison term in healthcare fraud worth $38 million

A Miami doctor was sentenced this week to five years in federal prison after admitting he filed around $38 million in fraudulent claims to health insurance companies for prescriptions that patients didn’t need or receive.

Armando Valdes was ordered to forfeit nearly $8 million and four real estate properties, including a beachfront condominium unit in Pompano Beach worth over $1 million, a 2,244square-foot house in Estero and a condo in Aventura, court records show. Valdes, 63, also had to give up a 2018 Cadillac Escalade and a 2016 Tesla Model S.

From 2015 through 2021, Valdes owned and operated Gasiel Medical Services Corp., a medical clinic in Miami, from where he submitted around $38 million in fraudulent claims to United Healthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield for the prescription drug Infliximab, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami said Wednesday in a news release.

Also known by the brand name Remicade, Infliximab is an expensive prescription approved for the treatment of Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis, among other conditions. Infliximab, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, is one of the most expensive prescription drugs on the market — a single dose can have a retail price of nearly $10,000.

Prosecutors say that despite claiming approximately $38 million in reimbursements for Infliximab purportedly provided to patients, Valdes admitted as part of his guilty plea in May that he never provided even a single infusion of the drug and that his patients didn’t require the medication.