A Texas doctor was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Wednesday for healthcare fraud after prosecutors said he ran a nearly two-decade scheme that involved falsely diagnosing thousands of patients with degenerative diseases and earning handsomely from their treatments.
Jorge Zamora-Quezada, a rheumatologist who was licensed to practice medicine in Texas, Arizona, and Massachusetts before being deprived of his licenses in each state, earned hundreds of millions of dollars for the misdiagnoses and treatments he prescribed throughout his roughly 20-year career. The treatments included severe rounds of chemotherapy, intravenous infusions, and a slew of other tests, monthly checkups, and routine procedures involved with the management of rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic, inflammatory disorder that has no cure.
The sentencing and his previous court appearances often presented stark contrasts. Prosecutors recounted his luxurious lifestyle, which included a private plane, 13 residences in the United States, including Aspen and several cities in Mexico, and a Maserati, all as the health of the victims he scammed deteriorated.
Prosecutors accused him of using vulnerable individuals in Texas, including minors, the elderly, and the crippled, in order to carry out the scam. Some of them spoke at Wednesday’s hearing about the long-term side consequences of the doctor’s activities, such as having unnecessary chemotherapy or IV infusions.
In a sit-down interview with Fox News Digital on Wednesday, Matthew Galeotti, head of the Justice Department Criminal Division, described it as “one of the most egregious” instances of its sort brought by the department in this arena.
That’s because of “all of the various kinds of misconduct rolled into one,” he said, “and because it was pervasive – the scheme lasted more than 18 years.”
“By the time you’re towards the end of the scheme, he knows the consequences some of these things have had on the victims, and he’s going forward anyways,” he said of the doctor.
The Justice Department’s Criminal Division has been prosecuting this case for several years. Unlike other agencies, it is one of the few where both career and political staff are largely in agreement, with goals and cases that go beyond partisan politics and strive to hold criminals accountable, such as the Texas doctor.
Galeotti believes the case exemplifies the Trump administration’s efforts to vindicate victims and combat wasted government expenditure.
“Even in cases where you don’t see this level of misconduct, where you’re not prescribing someone chemotherapy medicine that doesn’t need it, which obviously sort of stands out on its own, we still have a problem because you were wasting government funds that should be going to actually benefiting patients,” Galeotti said.
A separate Justice Department official told Fox News Digital that Zamora-Quezada’s case was one of the “most significant” examples of patient damage he has seen in at least a decade.
“There was testimony about truly debilitating side effects from the medications, things like strokes, necrosis of the jawbone, really the jawbone melting away, hair loss, liver damage,” the official said.
According to the Justice Department, the doctor’s acts were particularly severe since they sought to prey on lower-income groups in Texas, specifically minors, the elderly, and the crippled. The doctor also worked in places with limited access to medical care and fewer native English speakers than other sections of the state.
“Of course, it’s always the most twisted when you’re benefiting from someone else’s misfortune – misfortune you caused – and misfortune you used for your own personal enrichment,” Galeotti said.
“They’re the hallmarks of the worst kind of conduct that you see,” Galeotti said.
Zamora-Quezada was found guilty by a jury in 2020 of seven charges of healthcare fraud, one count of conspiracy to conduct healthcare fraud, and one act of obstruction of justice. According to public court records, his defense contended that the deception was not as “pervasive” as the government claimed.
Prosecutors claim Zamora-Quezada purchased condominium homes in tourist destinations such as Aspen, San Diego, and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. They claimed he commuted to his numerous doctors’ offices in Texas in a Maserati and a private plane, both with his initials, “ZQ.” Prosecutors forfeited his assets after charging him.
Meanwhile, they claimed that, despite living in luxury, Zamora-Quezada detected rheumatoid arthritis in 72.9% of the roughly 100,000 Medicare patients he treated. Prosecutors compared that data to seven other Texas rheumatologists, who diagnosed 13% of their patients with the same disease.
Prosecutors requested $100 million in restitution, but the judge ordered him to pay $28 million.
