U.S. Attorney’s Office – Western District of Texas, July 7, 2021
SAN ANTONIO – Christopher Felix Montoya, a licensed Physician’s Assistant and owner of TPC Family Care and Medical Clinics in San Antonio and Laredo, admitted to defrauding Medicaid, Medicare and TRICARE by fraudulent billing and receiving health care kickbacks.
Appearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry Bemporad this afternoon, Montoya pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and to pay and receive health care kickbacks. Montoya admitted that from September 2018 to June 2019, he enriched himself by performing nasal swabs on patients and then accepting kickbacks for submitting those swabs to a particular laboratory for testing. Montoya’s Chief Operating Officer, 41-year-old Nancy Almaguer of San Antonio, is charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and to pay and receive health care kickbacks and three counts of soliciting and receiving illegal health care kickbacks. Jury selection and trial for Almaguer is pending.
In a separate case, Montoya pleaded guilty on June 15, 2021, to one count of conspiracy to receive health care kickbacks. Montoya admitted that for five months beginning in February 2015, he received kickbacks to write prescriptions for compounded medication from a California-based pharmacy that had high TRICARE reimbursements. Based on the evidence, TRICARE was billed $1,884,577.86 for prescriptions Montoya wrote to which TRICARE paid out $797,262.21.
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