Ex-CEO of Whittier medical clinic pleads guilty in multi-million dollar Medi-Cal fraud scheme

The former president and CEO of a Whittier area medical clinic pleaded guilty on Thursday, August 3 to healthcare fraud and identity theft in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud a Medi-Cal healthcare program that provides family planning services, authorities said.

Vincenzo Rubino, a 58-year-old Valencia resident, pleaded guilty to nine counts of healthcare fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft. The pleas came in the middle of his federal trial.

Prosecutors said that Rubino founded and owned Santa Maria’s Children and Family Center in Whittier. The clinic was registered as a non-profit corporation and enrolled in the Medi-Cal program.

An investigation concluded that between August 2014 and August 2017, the clinic submitted nearly $5 million in fraudulent billing claims to Medi-Cal’s Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment program for services that were never provided. The claims used information from patients unknowingly recruited at an off-site diabetes testing location, prosecutors said.

To submit the claims, Rubino used the names of medical providers who did not work for the clinic or see patients there.

The program paid more than $2.3 million dollars for the clinic’s fraudulent claims, and paid an additional $1.5 million to a pharmacy and laboratory which also never delivered its advertised services, according to prosecutors.

United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II scheduled Rubino’s sentencing for January 2024, when he will face up to a decade in federal prison for each healthcare fraud count and a mandatory sentence of two years for each identity theft count.