Two Miami-Dade physicians could be going to prison for lengthy terms after a federal jury found them guilty of participating with three other convicted doctors in a Medicare racket that prescribed $19.5 million in obsolete infusion drugs for HIV patients.

Drs. Walter Proano and Manuel Barbeite were convicted Friday of writing prescriptions for Diagnostic Medical Choice, a Southwest Miami-Dade clinic that billed the government healthcare program for expensive HIV infusion services that were never provided to patients.

Barbeite, 70, was convicted of two counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy, which carry a total potential prison term of up to 20 years.

Proano, 46, was found guilty of one charge of fraud and one charge of conspiracy, which carry maximum potential sentences of 15 years in all.

Their sentencings are set for Oct. 29.

Both physicians worked for an HIV clinic that was paid almost $16 million by Medicare after it submitted false claims for HIV infusion treatments from 2003 to 2006, according to prosecutors.

Last spring, three other Miami-Dade doctors at the clinic, Carmen Lourdes del Cueto, 65, Marco Tulio Molinares, 74, and Alejandro Enrique Casuso, 73, pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud Medicare.

Esther Romeu, the owner of Diagnostic Medical Choice, which hired the physicians, pleaded guilty, too.

In other Medicare fraud prosecutions:

• Medical equipment supplier Reinaldo Guerra pleaded guilty Friday to submitting $123 million in bogus Medicare claims by stealing physicians' identification numbers and billing mainly for artificial limbs for dead patients. Guerra, who operated 11 medical equipment companies with straw owners, made $35 million off the false claims.

Guerra, 33, of Southwest Miami-Dade, was convicted of fraud and conspiracy. He faces more than 20 years in prison at his sentencing on Nov. 13.

His partner, Jose Luis Perez -- a fugitive believed to be in Latin America -- is charged with submitting an additional $56 million in false claims and pocketing $21 million from Medicare.

• On Thursday, Adonis Ortiz, 30, of Hialeah was found guilty of filing $6.2 million in phony claims for medical equipment that was neither prescribed by doctors nor provided to patients. Medicare paid his company, Daky Medical Supply in Miami, about $1.9 million.

Ortiz was convicted of three counts of Medicare fraud and one count of conspiracy.

He faces up to 10 years in prison at his sentencing on Oct. 30.

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