Man Is Accused of Posing as Dentist

At taxpayer expense, dozens of impoverished children had their teeth pulled or drilled without painkillers at a Los Angeles dental clinic by a man who was not a licensed dentist, authorities say.

One 10-year-old allegedly had two teeth extracted and another had four teeth filled -- without X-rays, examinations or medication.

Some parents heard their children screaming, health officials said, but were told to stay out of the treatment room.

By posing as a dentist, Luis Armando Penate of Los Angeles bilked Medi-Cal out of $60,000 for the work last year, according to a federal indictment this month charging him with health fraud and witness tampering.

Dr. Josefina Mangoba Banaga, 39, of Azusa, a licensed dentist who owned the clinic, also was charged with health-care fraud and allegedly was present as Penate worked on some of the children.

The defendants were arrested Feb. 13 and each was later ordered held on $75,000 bail.

Banaga’s attorney, Daron Tooch, said Monday that his client denies the allegations and is a good dentist. The state dental board Web site shows no disciplinary actions against her. An attorney for Penate, 28, could not be reached for comment.

Though the amount of money is dwarfed by other California Medi-Cal fraud cases, federal and state officials view this one as particularly egregious.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Daniel S. Linhardt, who has prosecuted hundreds of health-care scams, said, “The fraud [usually] is for billing for something that did not happen. So no one is physically hurt....

“Here, little children were hurt, and that completely changes everything.”

If convicted, Penate faces up to 30 years in prison and Banaga faces up to 10, Linhardt said.

Dental fraud in the $27-billion Medi-Cal program has been a persistent problem in recent years. State health officials have about two dozen active investigations, most of them in Southern California.

“For us, the fraud [in this case] goes beyond the money,” said Diana Ducay, who oversees the state health department’s investigations and audits. “This was a health issue because it crossed the line and endangered beneficiaries.”

Officials said the probe started when a doctor working with state health investigators saw that a dental clinic owned by Banaga had been reimbursed for about $200,000 in a one-year period, mostly for work on children.

The clinic, bearing Banaga’s name, was briefly on Western Avenue before it moved to North Vermont Avenue, but now is closed, officials said.

Closer examination of the payments determined that some of the work was performed when the dentist, Banaga, was not there, said Larry Malm, the state’s chief of Medi-Cal investigations.

Investigators concluded that the defendants from April through November of last year made $60,000 in improper billings to the state’s health program for the poor. The indictment said they submitted claims as though Banaga had performed the work when in fact it was done by Penate, who is not a licensed California dentist.

“Without conducting any examination nor taking any X-rays, not administering any painkillers, Penate picked an object up that looked like a fork, jammed it into [a 10-year-old patient’s] gums and extracted two teeth,” the indictment said.

“Another 10-year-old child who went into the back room without a parent was not examined, did not have an X-ray, but had four teeth drilled and fillings placed in those four teeth.”

The indictment also alleged that Banaga and Penate fraudulently billed the state for dental procedures performed on Mondays when the clinic was closed.

And it said that Penate threatened physical harm and deportation to clinic employees if they told investigators that the clinic was closed on Mondays.

The parents of many of the patients, Malm said, are immigrants and were not aware of the standards of dental practice in the United States.

“We know they were concerned about the treatment,” he said. “But until we contacted them, they did not know they could complain.”

Marcela Perez, an immigrant from Mexico whose husband is a Popsicle vendor, brought her two daughters to the clinic in October.

She said Penate filled a tooth for her 9-year-old, and gave the girl pain medication.

“Then the [state] investigators came about 15 days afterward and told us he didn’t have a license to practice,” Perez said in Spanish. “[This] just outraged me because he could have hurt my kids.”

While acting as a dentist, Penate got his own Medi-Cal card, the indictment said.

He allegedly collected $5,000 in benefits for himself and his child, although he had too many assets to qualify for aid.

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Vicky Keith of La Opinion contributed to this report.