Two South Florida doctors have been arrested on charges of unlawfully dispensing opioids to patients at their medical offices, the state attorney's offices announced Thursday.
Victor Hugo Espinosa, 57, of Fort Lauderdale, and Rodolfo Gonzalez-Garcia, 65, of Weston, each were physicians at pain clinics in Hialeah.
Espinosa, a designated physician at East Medical Office, Inc., is accused of providing over 1,000 prescriptions for Oxycodone to patients for no legitimate medical reason in exchange for cash from August 2017 to May 2018.
He allegedly prescribed approximately 119,534 tablets of Oxycodone, to which patients would illegally sell, the complaint alleged. The tablets accounted for 99 percent of all controlled substances Espinosa prescribed at East Medical.
Gonzalez-Garcia was the physician provider for West Medical Office, Inc., where was allegedly paid by Fidel Marrero-Castellanos, 56, of Miami, to prescribe Oxycodone and OxyContin, the state attorney's office alleged.
Marrero-Castellanos allegedly recruited Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries as patients and also paid Gonzalez-Garcia's wife Arlene Gonzalez; 36-year-old Sucett Lopez Hialeah and 35-year-old Annie Suarez-Gonzalez of Westmont, Illinois, for prescriptions.
Each defendant faces 20 years imprisonment and hearings begin for the doctors on Tuesday. Attorney information was not available.
