Santa Ana ‘Doctor’ Faces Imposter Charges

A man who allegedly treated more than 1,000 patients over a 14-month period in Santa Ana while assuming the identity of a California-licensed doctor has been arrested, authorities said Friday.

Rigoberto Camacho Alvarez, 48, was arrested in San Diego, near his La Mesa home, and charged with practicing medicine without a license and identity theft, said Jim Kovash, supervising investigator in Orange County for the California Medical Board.

The felony charges can bring a $10,000 fine and a year in jail, Kovash said.

Alvarez was being held Friday in the Orange County Jail on $100,000 bail.

Alvarez worked for nearly 14 months at the First and Bristol Family Medical Clinic, where he called himself Ricardo Saturnino Alvarez, Kovash said.

The real Ricardo Saturnino Alvarez, 56, is a retired Oxnard doctor who lives in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla.

He began to suspect that his identity had been stolen after receiving correspondence from the Santa Ana clinic, Kovash said.

“He was disturbed, so he contacted the medical board in Florida,” said Kovash.

The clinic operators could not be reached for comment.

Kovash said the scheme was sophisticated: “It’s unusual in the sense that we do a lot of unlicensed medical practice cases where people just pretend to be a doctor. This is a case where a suspect took legitimate credentials and assumed that identity.”

Kovash said the suspect earned $75 an hour seeing patients for common medical problems.

Kovash said clinic owners cooperated with the investigation.

The owners “are not part of this scam,” he said. “They were actually scammed.”