When a detective pursuing a false-teeth fraud investigation found photos of naked teen girls on a computer seized from a Sunrise dental office, the case was propelled into a child pornography probe, a search warrant shows.
Marino Vigna, 48, who lives in Parkland and operates Sunrise Dental Clinic at 5975 W. Sunrise Blvd., is suspected of fraudulently billing Medicaid for dentures for patients who either did not need them or never received them, court records show.
Many of the alleged patients had dementia and lived at nursing homes in Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Homestead, records show.
"Dr. Vigna has not been charged with a single criminal act," his lawyer, Louis Martinez, said Tuesday. "We vehemently deny there was anything explicit found on any of his computers or that anything illegal has been done."
No one has been charged in the dental fraud probe but the clinic's billing practices from January 1, 2010 to the present are the focus of an inquiry by the office of Florida's Attorney General.
In June, investigators working the fraud case confiscated computers, hard drives and business records from the clinic. While examining an external hard drive, a detective found a folder containing "numerous files of young females naked and engaged in sex acts," as well as "various documents related to the dental practice within the folder," the warrant said.
The nude images showed girls presumed to be about 15 exposing themselves in "a lewd manner," according to the Oct. 20 warrant.
"[An investigator] seeks to search the drive for evidence related to this child pornography investigation," Broward sheriff's Detective Adam Granit wrote in the warrant. "[An investigator] seeks to search for any files, documents or data that tends to prove who is responsible for putting child pornography images on the drive."
The alleged fraud has been under investigation since 2012. Court records do not estimate how much may have been bilked from Medicaid.
One alleged patient, now 99, has dementia, cannot communicate, has long been restricted to a liquid diet because of difficulty chewing and swallowing and would have no need for false teeth, records show.
"Investigators discovered many of these patients were already deceased or unable to be interviewed due to physical and/or psychological disability," Investigator Alexander Perez wrote in a search warrant related to the fraud investigation. "[Others] simply could not remember if they had even received dentures or any services from Dr. Vigna.
Vigna, a licensed dentist in Florida since October 1992, was reprimanded and fined by the state Department of Health in 2000 for improperly constructing dental bridges, records show.
In 2013, Vigna was arrested and charged with third-degree felony possession of a controlled substance without a prescription and a misdemeanor DUI.
State prosecutors eventually dropped the drug charge and Vigna pleaded no contest to DUI charges. His driver's license was suspended for six months and he was sentenced to one year probation which ended in February, court records show.
Source: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-sunrise-dentist-child-porn-investigation-20151125-story.html
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