Thursday, April 16, 2026 3:44PM
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — A Fresno doctor and a pharmaceutical sales representative from Clovis have been sentenced for a major healthcare fraud scheme.
Prosecutors say 52-year-old Felipe Ruiz was a podiatrist and owner of West Coast Podiatry Incorporated, where he allowed the sales rep to practice medicine.
Between 2021 and 2024, 53-year-old Jose Aguirre sold skin grafts to Ruiz and was allowed to apply those skin grafts to patients without supervision from a physician.
Ruiz and Aguirre submitted fraudulent claims to Medicare, Medicaid and Medi-Cal, saying Ruiz and other physicians had performed those procedures.
Over $3 million in false claims were submitted.
Both men have been sentenced to over five years in prison.
They also must forfeit nine properties they own and pay back millions of dollars.
Copyright © 2026 KFSN-TV. All Rights Reserved.
Related Topics
THE HASHFLARE “CLOUD MINING” PONZI SCHEME (GLOBAL/ESTONIA)
Date: February 13, 2025 (Guilty Pleas) Perpetrators: Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin
Case Description: This $577 million cryptocurrency fraud remains one of the largest digital asset scams in history, with major legal developments concluding in 2025. Potapenko and Turogin operated “Hashflare,” which they marketed as a massive cryptocurrency mining operation. Hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide purchased “mining contracts,” believing they were renting hash power to mine Bitcoin. In reality, the duo was running a sophisticated Ponzi scheme.
They created fake customer dashboards that showed “real-time” mining profits, but the money being paid out was simply the capital of newer investors. They laundered the proceeds through shell companies to purchase luxury real estate and a fleet of high-end vehicles. After a massive international investigation involving the FBI and Estonian authorities, the pair agreed to forfeit over $400 million in assets. This case underscores the “Cyber-enabled Fraud” warning issued by the FATF in early 2026: as technology evolves, the scale of fraud moves from local millions to global billions in the blink of an eye.
Link to Original: ACFE – High Profile Fraud of 2025