Miami doctor pleads guilty to falsifying clinical trial data for asthma medication
A Miami pediatrician has pleaded guilty to falsifying clinical trial data for an asthma medication for children and defrauding a pharmaceutical company that commissioned the research.
Dr. Yvelice Villaman-Bencosme, 64, admitted in a federal plea agreement Friday that she conducted the purported clinical trials at Unlimited Medical Research in Miami, which were designed to investigate the safety and efficiency of the medication for children between the ages of 4 and 11.
Villaman-Bencosme, whose state medical license was issued in 1993 and shows she has staff privileges at Miami Children’s Hospital, faces between five and seven years at her sentencing on a wire fraud conspiracy charge in March before U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom. The physician also must pay a forfeiture judgment of $174,000, according to her plea agreement with the Justice Department.
“Dr. Villaman-Bencosme regrets her conduct and has accepted responsibility for her wrongdoing,” her defense attorney, Hector Flores, said Monday. “At this point she is doing everything that she can to correct what she did.”
A co-defendant, Lisett Raventos, a former study coordinator at Unlimited Medical Research, also pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy charge in November and faces about three years in prison along with a forfeiture judgment of $65,000, court records show.
Two other defendants charged in the case are Maytee Liedo and Jessica Palacio.
In a factual statement filed with her plea agreement, Villaman-Bencosme admitted that between 2013 and 2016 she fabricated medical records to make it look like the young asthma patients participated in scheduled clinical trials at Unlimited Medical Research. She also claimed they took the study drugs as required and received check payments for their visits.
“When those charged with investigating the efficacy of new drugs manipulate the data for personal profit, they violate the public’s trust and pose serious threats to our collective health and safety,” said U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan, whose Miami office assisted in the prosecution.
The conspiracy case was investigated by the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations and prosecuted by Justice Department trial attorneys Joshua Rothman and Kara Traster.
This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
