Feds Are 11 for 11 in Guilty Pleas in $300M Medical-Lab Kickback Scheme

Less than three months after their indictment, 11 Texans, including two doctors and a nurse practitioner, have pleaded guilty to taking part in a $300 million kickback scheme involving needless lab tests that were billed to Medicare and other taxpayer-financed insurance programs.

Jose Roel Maldonado, a family-medicine doctor in Laredo, Eduardo Carlos Canova, an internist in Laredo, and Keith Allen Wichinski, a nurse practitioner in San Antonio, were accused in a February 9 indictment by a federal grand jury in Fort Worth of taking under-the-table payments to order millions of dollars’ worth of blood and toxicology tests at three Dallas-area labs: Unified Laboratory Services in Fort Worth, Spectrum Diagnostic Laboratory in Arlington, and Reliable Labs in Carrollton.