MIAMI – After beating the incumbent, Angélica Pacheco’s biography as a Hialeah councilwoman since Nov. 10, 2023, praised her “triumph over poverty” and her “unshakeable belief that all things are possible with God by her side.”
It also described Pacheco, 37, as a nurse who “specialized in mental health and addiction treatment” and “drug use prevention,” and who “became an advocate for those in need, educating adolescents and their families on drug use prevention and securing addiction treatment scholarships for the uninsured.”
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A grand jury’s indictment filed on Wednesday described Pacheco as the woman behind a $19.1 million fraud related to the Florida Life Recovery and Rehabilitation LLC, a Hialeah-based company that her husband Daniel Pacheco registered as active from March 20, 2017, to Aug. 31, 2022, and focused on outpatient mental health and substance abuse centers.
The indictment described Pacheco as “a registered nurse, employee, and beneficial owner of Florida Life” who agreed to “defraud” private insurance companies from July 2017 to August 2020 to “unlawfully enrich” herself by “submitting and causing” fraudulent claims, paying kickbacks and bribes, allowing a patient to “piggyback” on another patient’s insurance, and offering other “scholarships” in exchange for a patient referring other individuals with insurance.
According to the indictment, Pacheco and her co-conspirators entered into agreements with owners of laboratories and into “reciprocal referral agreements with other affiliated substance abuse treatment centers that involved recycling the same patients back and forth through the different treatment centers, regardless of whether doing so was medically necessary.”
The indictment also alleged that “to keep patients docile and incentivize them to attend and remain at Florida Life,” Pacheco allowed medications “in quantities and combinations that at times grossly diverged from legitimate medical practice, and which were intended to offer patients a substitute for a narcotic or alcohol-induced high.”
Pacheco also stands accused of allowing services “so substandard that they failed to serve a treatment purpose,” and of billing for services for patients not enrolled in treatment at Florida Life. The federal case against her also involves alleged false business loan applications related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Miami Herald reported Pacheco surrendered and appeared before Magistrate Judge Lauren F. Louis on Thursday. Records show she is facing eight charges: Conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and wire fraud, five counts of healthcare fraud, and two counts of wire fraud. Her husband, Daniel Pacheco, was not mentioned by name in the indictment.
Before the arrest, she published “The Tireless Fight In Search of Justice Has Consequences,” a video in Spanish on YouTube saying Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo had threatened her and blamed “the Hialeah administration” for anything that happened to her. The video included clips of council meetings showing the animosity between them.
“They are trying to find a way to get rid of me,” she said in Spanish in the video.
Bovo released statements in English and Spanish on Thursday on X to say that the alleged crimes were “not related nor linked” to “her capacity as an elected official.”
Florida law allows Gov. Ron DeSantis to issue an executive order to suspend elected and appointed officials charged with a felony or misdemeanor.
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Pacheco’s video
Bovo’s statement
It's an unfortunate day for the residents as we await the federal authorities to continue their investigation against Councilwoman Pacheco. The federal charges presented against the councilwoman are not related to her capacity as an elected official for the City of Hialeah. pic.twitter.com/0aq3S5YIri
— Esteban Bovo (@MayorBovo) June 20, 2024
Read the indictment
Local 10 News Assignment Desk Editor Stephany Heilbron contributed to this report.