After state officials claimed to have broken an insurance fraud scheme in an undercover operation, the owner of a Miami rehab clinic and two of her workers, a nurse practitioner and a therapist, are each facing more than twenty-one criminal counts, including counts of racketeering.
The Florida Department of Financial Services Bureau of Insurance Fraud investigation centering on Ace Medical & Rehab Center, 3990 W. Flagler St., in the Flagami area.
On Tuesday, advanced practice registered nurse Maylett Leiva-Santana, 42, therapist Lensky Jose Hernandez-Santiago, 43, and clinic owner Yanirma Toledo, 42, were taken into custody by the authorities.
All three of them reside in southwest Miami-Dade; the arrest reports, which don’t elaborate on their relationship, list Leiva-Santana and Hernandez-Santiago’s shared residence as being on Southwest 229th Street in the Goulds neighborhood.
According to the papers, after getting “several tips” that the three were “misleading and defrauding insurance companies,” authorities started looking into the facility in January.
According to the authorities, on January 30, detectives went to the site with two cooperating witnesses and fabricated a crash report.
Authorities there claimed that instead of receiving actual therapy, patients there were given regular physical examinations and X-rays and were had to fill out medical and therapy forms before seeing a doctor.
Authorities said that multiple therapy sessions that never happened were invoiced to insurance providers by the clinic. Hernandez-Santiago reportedly paid one witness to bring the other to the clinic, according to the arrest records.
Leiva-Santana, who was named as the clinic’s “doctor” in the arrest records, was also instructed by Hernandez-Santiago to add a fictitious injury to a claim in order “to get more money from the insurance companies,” according to officials.
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According to the authorities, the three sent United Auto Insurance a $47,310 charge for injuries that never happened.
Individual accusations of racketeering, conspiracy to commit grand theft and racketeering, two counts of organized plot to defraud, and twenty-three counts of insurance fraud are brought against each of them.
Hernandez-Santiago is also charged with money laundering. As of Tuesday afternoon, they were all being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on various bond amounts.
