Is it just me, or does Texas seem to have quite a few shady doctors lately? First, there was Steven Hotze, whose hatred toward the LGBT community seems endless. Now, there is this other Texas doctor named Jorge Zamora-Quezada. Instead of spreading hate and bigotry like Hotze, Zamora-Quezada took a different villainous route by scamming his patients. Rather than genuinely caring for their health, he saw them as nothing more than walking cash machines to fuel his scam.
How did he pull it off? He claimed his patients were suffering from a chronic disease. As we know, these serious illnesses require costly and often risky treatments. His whole scam was about squeezing as much money as possible from his patients and their insurance companies. Using this scam, Jorge managed to rake in $118 million, which he used to live like royalty with a private jet, luxury cars, and big houses.
This scam lasted for more than two decades. The Texas doctor started by falsely diagnosing his patients with rheumatoid arthritis, a painful disease. It was not just adults he scammed; some of his victims were kids, including a poor 13-year-old child.
Of course, pulling off this scam alone was not realistic. He added to his list of wrongdoings by manipulating his staff, many of whom were vulnerable due to their immigration status. He forced them to cooperate with his scam and even used ultrasounds from his employees to further fool insurance companies.
If any patients got too curious or started asking too many questions, he had no problem kicking them out of his practice. This doctor’s scam was driven by pure greed and a shocking level of exploitation. Many people online were horrified to learn what he had done. One Redditor wrote, “He called himself the eminence while lying to kids about incurable diseases to buy a Maserati. That’s fraud and supervillain-tier evil in a lab coat.”
Others criticized the justice system, questioning why he only received ten years in prison after causing so much pain and suffering. Another user commented, “I saw a doctor commit health insurance fraud once, but he didn’t falsely diagnose anyone. He just overbilled the government for each patient. He stole around 25 million dollars and got 20 years in prison at age 68. This guy arguably did far worse by hurting real people, and he only got half the time.”
Some people argued that the scam pulled off by this Texas doctor hurt far more than just his patients. One user passionately wrote, “He affected literally everyone in this country. Defrauding health insurance companies out of 120 million dollars affects all of us. These greedy bastards and corporate sellouts, including some of these doctors who put themselves above the rest of us, are literally killing our healthcare system.”
