Flower Mound doctor pleads guilty after signing fake prescriptions for cancer testing
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A Flower Mound doctor pleaded guilty Tuesday in a Medicare fraud scheme, through which the doctor billed Medicare and other insurance companies for equipment and testing that patients never received, according to federal prosecutors.
The doctor, Daniel Canchola, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and is scheduled to be sentenced in March, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.
Canchola worked with telemedicine companies and other individuals to sign orders for medical equipment and cancer testing for patients who never received the equipment or testing, and did so without seeing, speaking to, or treating actual patients, according to federal prosecutors. For more than a year, Canchola received $30 in exchange for each doctor’s order he signed. In total, he received more than $466,000 in kickbacks. As part of the scheme, Canchola wrote prescriptions that were “not legitimately prescribed, not needed, not used and induced through the payment and receipt of unlawful kickbacks and bribes,” according to the indictment filed against him in 2019.
Canchola’s Texas medical license was suspended in October 2019. The doctor completed an internship with JPS Health Network. He did not have any local hospital privileges at the time his medical license was suspended in 2019, according to the Texas Medical Board.
Canchola’s attorneys did not immediately respond to an email from the Star-Telegram asking for comment.
He faces up to 20 years in prison.
