Attorney General Kris Mayes made an announcement indicating Jose Andres Lopez, a former medical practice employee, will face 3.5 years behind bars for insurance fraud and money laundering crimes. Following his incarceration, Lopez will endure a 7-year stretch of supervised probation and is ordered to repay a sum of $45,000 in restitution, according to a press release on the Attorney General's official website. Lopez entered a guilty plea for Fraudulent Schemes & Artifices, along with Money Laundering - both of which are felonies of varying degrees.
During his time at a clinic in Mohave County, Lopez worked his way up from an employee to an office manager, a role which saw him to eventually manage access to electronic records and prescriptions. Sometime in 2020 and 2021, Lopez used his privileged access to send unauthorized prescription orders for himself and another clinic employee. These acts unfolded between June 2017 and March 2021 — a period where trust misplaced by the clinic's doctor was exploited for personal gain.
Additionally, Lopez stirred deceitful waters by creating fake patient visit records for himself, feigning physical therapy treatments that never actually occurred. The sham portrayed in these records steered insurance carriers into paying at least $45,000 to settle a personal injury claim, born from an auto accident that involved Lopez. Attorney General Mayes underlined her office's efficiency, saying, "My office has one of the best Health Care Fraud and Abuse divisions in the country. I'm proud of the work they did on this case to uncover the fraud and illegal actions of this medical employee," as stated in the Arizona Attorney General's Office press release.
February 18, 2022, saw Lopez receiving a sentence for a separate incident in Maricopa County. The charges stemmed from Lopez providing false income information to the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) in order to wrongfully acquire healthcare benefits for himself. As a part of his sentence, he was also ordered to make restitution payments to AHCCCS. The indictment reached its crescendo in December 2022, following probing by the Arizona Attorney General’s Criminal Division, Health Care Fraud and Abuse Section. Handling the prosecution was Assistant Attorney General Vineet Mehta Shaw. The release includes a link to the indictment as well as Lopez’s booking photo.
