Plaintiffs, Defendants, Crime, and the Outcome

Plaintiffs, Defendants, Crime, and the Outcome

On the 15th of January 2020, Dr. Zamora-Quezada was found guilty of diagnosing the patients falsely with rheumatoid arthritis and other ailments so that he could prescribe drugs for them as part of a $325 million fraud scheme. Below is a detailed discussion of the full details of the case, that is, the Plaintiffs, Defendants, Crime, and the Outcome.

Plaintiffs

Two victims, Gloria Martinez Gabriel and Christina Deras, sued Zamora-Quezada for allegedly prescribing wrong medications for them.

Gloria Martinez Gabriel

Gloria M. Gabriel, who was formerly working for the city and Bexar County, was forced to retire because her body was weak. She said that she felt as if she had “barbs of metal” inside her.  “I got real, real sick. I lost my hair. I had no idea that I was taking chemo. When I came out a couple of months later, I couldn’t walk anymore. At one point, I couldn’t walk, I became lethargic; I just wanted to die.” Gabriel said.

Christina Deras

Christina Deras, who was formerly working for the Veterans Affairs Administration, was also forced to retire because of her body failure. “When he gave me the news that fibromyalgia has no cure, I was devastated. And Rheumatoid Arthritis, I didn’t know much about it. I should have checked these medications, and I didn’t. I just trusted him. This man has stolen my life,” Christina Deras said. She says she’s been living in tremendous pain since being treated by Dr. Zamora-Quezada.

Defendants

Dr. Zamora Quezada, who is not a stranger to the courts, was on trial with three co-defendants who are his two former employees, Felix Ramos and Estella Santos, and his wife, Meisy Zamora. They are accused of taking part in the money laundering scheme by tampering with medical records of the patients. There was also an employee, Jose Tomas Moreno, who testified that when the clinic was asked to turn over patient records, he and a medical assistant replaced missing ultrasound images with those that belonged to different patients with the approval of Zamora Quezada.

Crime

As stated earlier, there were two accusations against Dr. Zamora, which include the false diagnosis of the patients with rheumatoid arthritis and other ailments and being involved in an extensive $325 million money-laundering scheme. It has been confirmed that he laundered money through a money exchange forum and sent it to a variety of accounts in financial institutions located in Mexico.

The outcome

After a federal jury trial that lasted for 25 days in McAllen, Dr. Jorge Zamora-Quezada was convicted of one conspiracy count to health care, seven health care fraud counts, and one conspiracy count to obstruct justice. He is expected to be sentenced on the 27th of March 2020, by Judge Ricardo Hinojosa, who presided over the trial. However, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it seems like the sentence has to wait.

Conclusively, being a doctor is a very delicate and respectful profession, as it deals with the handling of people’s lives. Doctors like Zamora-Quezada are misusing their profession. Usually, there are rare cases of a doctor giving wrong prescriptions to their patients willingly. Therefore, because of his heinous acts, he should be punished accordingly by the law.