Miami clinic owner withdraws guilty plea, loses at trial, sentenced in $16M fraud
In 2023, a trio of Miami-Dade clinic operators pleaded guilty to bilking about $16 million out of the government-funded Medicaid program by falsely billing for unnecessary mental health services while paying kickbacks to patients.
But one of the three withdrew his plea and opted for trial in February. A federal jury then found Rigoberto Cordero guilty of 30 counts, including conspiracy, healthcare fraud, paying kickbacks and money laundering.
On Thursday, Cordero, 61, was sentenced to 14 years in prison by U.S. District Judge James Cohn. He was also ordered to pay back Medicaid for its losses.
By comparison, his wife, Mileidy Romero Tellechea, 44, was previously sentenced to four years after pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge and cooperating with prosecutors. The couple’s business associate, Iset Yanes Doval, 39, got less time, one year and four months.
“While Mr. Cordero’s decision to withdraw his prior guilty plea and proceed to trial may, in hindsight, appear ill-advised, it was rooted in his sincere belief in his innocence,” his defense attorney, Joaquin Perez, wrote in a memo seeking a lesser sentence at Thursday’s hearing. “Exercising his constitutional right to a public trial by jury, as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, should not be held against him at sentencing.”
An indictment accused the couple of operating two clinics in West Miami-Dade — 1st Class Mental Health Services Corp. and Eternity Mental Health Corp. — that submitted false bills to the federally funded Medicaid program for “psychosocial rehabilitative services” between 2018 and 2022.
To pull off the scheme, the couple paid kickbacks in the hundreds of dollars to Medicaid patients who did not need the mental health sessions or did not attend them, the indictment says. Bribes were also paid to recruiters for referring the patients.
Those kickbacks rendered the whole healthcare billing scheme a “fraud” under laws regulating the Medicaid program, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Clark said in a trial brief.
Medicaid, a state-run program that mainly serves low-income people, paid 1st Class about $10 million and Eternity another $6 million for the bogus services, according to the indictment.
Cordero and Romero, as owners of the two clinics, pocketed a chunk of that money and spent it on themselves, Clark said. Yanes, the office manager of 1st Class, assisted in the billing scheme, he said.
This story was originally published May 16, 2025 at 4:03 PM.
