Former fugitive doctor admits fraud

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) — A doctor who spent a dozen years on the run from federal fraud charges in Illinois before being captured in his native Peru has pleaded guilty and faces up to 35 years in prison and more than $1.5 million in fines.

Dr. Juan Rios, who lived in the St. Louis suburb of Florissant, Mo., pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis to three counts of mail fraud and one count apiece of health care fraud and failing to appear in court.

Federal prosecutors say the native Peruvian, who had medical offices in Collinsville and Bethalto, admitted defrauding several insurance companies of more than $400,000 and pocketed more than $250,000 in fraudulent disability payments while he still worked.

Rios, 65, had faced only one fraud count alleging he cheated Medicaid and private insurers out of more than $1 million when he jumped $3.5 million bail and vanished in 1999.

Federal marshals returned Rios to the United States from Peru in June, when southern Illinois’ top federal prosecutor, Stephen Wigginton, publicly declared that “justice may have been delayed, but it will not be denied.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in 2000 that investigators found Rios’ patients did not receive as much as 80 percent of the physical therapy sessions for which he billed insurance companies. In one case, investigators said, one patient’s passport showed he was out of the country during the time of seven physical therapy sessions billed to an insurer.

Investigators alleged that Rios would duplicate his notes from an actual session and place them in other patients’ files.

Rios also allegedly defrauded his own insurance companies in 1993 and again in 1996 by claiming to be injured and able to work only a few hours a month, the Post-Dispatch reported. The insurers paid him more than $250,000 over a two-year span, even though he continued to work as a doctor.

Rios filed for bankruptcy in 1998 and is accused of using a false Social Security number in the case.

Rios also faces up to three years of mandatory post-prison supervision when sentenced Jan. 4.