A Houston dental clinic operator, Rene Fernandez Gaviola, has been sentenced to a decade behind bars for his part in a multimillion-dollar Medicaid fraud scheme involving pediatric dental services. The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of Texas announced that besides the 120-month prison term, Chief U.S. District Judge Randy Crane mandated Gaviola to pay substantial restitution and a personal judgment totaling nearly $8 million.
Orchestrating the scheme from 2018 to 2021 through his clinic, Floss Family Dental Care, Gaviola filed false claims to Medicaid for services that were either not provided or improperly rendered by unlicensed individuals, including his son. The court pointed out, in delivering the sentence, that Gaviola involved his college-aged son in his "crooked" operations, and despite being caught sitting on assets worth $2 million in the Philippines, he made no attempts at restitution.
As part of the scheme, Gaviola had reportedly employed marketers and caregivers to bring Medicaid-insured children to his clinic, offering kickbacks in return. Through these illicit efforts, the clinic billed Medicaid approximately $6.9 million, with accepted claims amounting to about $4.9 million. Gaviola's laundering of the ill-gotten gains came through substantial bank transactions, some exceeding $100,000, from the Floss business account to his personal one.
Meanwhile, Mia Diaz, Gaviola’s co-conspirator and a manager at Floss, was previously handed a 21-month prison sentence following her role in the same fraudulent activities. Found guilty of similar charges, she will also have to serve three years of supervised release subsequent to her time in prison. The investigations leading to these convictions were conducted by a combination of the FBI, the Texas Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control and the Department of Health and Human Services - Office of Inspector General, with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kathryn Olson and Lauren Valenti prosecuting the case.
Following the pronouncement of his sentence, Gaviola, previously out on bond, was taken into custody, the Department of Justice reported. He awaits transfer to a yet-to-be-determined U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility where he will commence serving his sentence.
