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Verdict returned in health care fraud case
Published September 27, 2009
Jurors in the case against Dr. Rafael Solis and Sylvia Delgado returned their verdict Saturday.
The jury, comprised of two men and 10 women, spent about three-and-a-half hours split between Friday night and Saturday morning deliberating before announcing its findings to U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlum.
In the case against Delgado, jurors found her guilty on all charges, including seven counts of health care fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and two counts of providing false statements relating to health care matters.
In Solis' case, the jury found him guilty on three counts of providing false statements relating to health care matters.
All of the charges involved in the case centered around operations at Synergy Counseling, which was supposed to provide group psychotherapy treatment for elderly patients.
The government, however, claimed that therapy never took place and what was conducted equated to nothing more than adult day care services.
For his alleged role in Synergy, Solis was found not guilty on all counts, including seven counts of health care fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, one count of providing false statements relating to health care matters and six counts of money laundering.
The jury found Solis guilty, however, of providing information to the government he knew to be false when in 2006 and 2008 he signed applications requesting billing privileges through Medicare and Medicaid.
On those applications Solis lied about having his privileges suspended, and that he was under indictment by the federal government following an investigation in Synergy.
A third defendant in the case, Robert Rael, pleaded guilty in 2007 and testified against Solis and Delgado.
The government's case against the trio alleges they billed more than 49,000 claims to Medicare and Medicaid for services not rendered between January 2002 and September 2005, collecting more than $1.4 million that was split mostly between Rael and Delgado.
Billing for group psychotherapy sessions was conducted by Delgado, who operated a private billing service under the name MedComp Electronic Billing, which was located in the same suite at 104 Fletcher Drive as Synergy.
For the counts of health care fraud, Delgado was found guilty of billing the government for group psychotherapy sessions in seven instances, despite knowing there was no one at Synergy on those dates to provide therapy.
Delgado was also found guilty for her role in helping coerce false statements from patients following Synergy's 2005 closure in an attempt to reinstate Medicare payments to Solis, and for, herself, providing false information on affidavits filed with the government.
The jury also found Delgado guilty of conspiring to defraud the government for her role in the Synergy scheme.
Ludlum allowed Solis and Delgado to remain free on bond until sentencing, which is tentatively set for April 2010.
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