The former president and CEO of a Whittier medical clinic was sentenced today to 124 months in federal prison for submitting fraudulent billings to a Medi-Cal healthcare program that provides family planning services to low-income Californians who lack health insurance. Vincenzo Rubino, 59, of Valencia, was sentenced by United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II, who also ordered him to pay $3,815,478 in restitution and entered a money judgment of $2,308,028. Rubino founded, owned, and operated Santa Maria’s Children and Family Center, a Whittier-based medical clinic based registered as a non-profit public benefit corporation and enrolled as a Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment (Family PACT) provider run through Medi-Cal. From November 2014 to August 2017, the center submitted fraudulent claims totaling nearly $5 million to the Family PACT program for family planning services that were never provided, often using the information of patients who were recruited at off-site locations with offers of free diabetes testing.
To submit many of these claims, Rubino used the names of two medical providers who were not employed at Santa Maria’s. The patients did not see these providers — a physician’s assistant and an elderly doctor who was himself a patient in a skilled nursing facility during much of the scheme. The Medi-Cal program paid more than $2.3 million dollars on the fraudulent claims, as well as an additional approximately $1.5 million to a pharmacy and laboratory for claims stemming from referrals from Santa Maria based on the same services that were never delivered.
