Was Stealing Patients Part Of $20 Million Medicaid Scam?

(MCT)

Josias Ortiz-Nelson didn’t think it was unusual when he was told by telephone in April that his dentist’s office was moving from Hartford to Cromwell and a shuttle service would pick him up for an upcoming appointment.

But when the shuttle service drove by the Franklin Avenue office of his dentist, Savvas Mintatos, Ortiz-Nelson noticed something odd: Mintatos’ car parked in the office lot.

“I’m, like, ‘Wow’,” says Ortiz-Nelson, a Hartford resident, “but I didn’t bother to question it because I figured he was moving stuff from his office.”
Yet when Ortiz-Nelson arrived at the “new” office, he didn’t recognize the secretary and, after filling out a patient-information form, he didn’t recognize the name of the practice listed at the top, either.
So he asked if, in fact, he was in the office of Dr. Savvas Mintatos.
The answer, perhaps already apparent, was no. Ortiz-Nelson was in Alpha Dental Care, a practice federal authorities say is associated with an unlicensed dentist who a little more than month later was accused, with a second dentist, of stealing $20 million in government dental benefits for low-income patients.

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