After Years of Offering Fraudulent Radiology Services, a Florida Couple Finally Gets Jail Time

A phony radiology clinic in Kissimmee, Florida was busted after six years of conducting unlicensed mammography procedures. Alba Garcia and Oscar Alzate, the owners of Digital Radiology Center, Inc. and Medisound, Inc., clinics, were recently charged with Medicaid fraud and running an unlicensed clinic. The two are now serving three-year prison terms for billing Medicaid for $180,000 worth of fabricated radiology services.

The couple, neither whom were doctors, provided faulty mammography procedures and forged doctors’ signatures on license and medical reports. However, it took a handful of run-ins with the Food and Drug Administration until Garcia and Alzate were finally arrested. Back in 2007, the FDA warned the clinic that their mammogram services were not being executed correctly. In 2010, the FDA published a safety warning about the quality of the clinic’s mammograms. Then again in 2012, the FDA released another statement encouraging patients of Medisound “to have their mammograms re-evaluated and possibly repeated.”

According to WFTV9, Florida officials were confused as to how Medisound managed to stay in business for so long without licensure or physician supervision. This isn’t the first time a radiology clinic in the sunshine state has submitted false Medicaid claims. Back in 2011, Midtown Imaging LLC in West Palm Beach paid out $3 million to resolve eight years of fraudulent Medicaid claims between 2000 and 2008.