El Paso, TX (KKOB) – A Doña Ana County woman is jailed in El Paso, Texas in connection with several charges of medical fraud for impersonating a nurse in El Paso and Las Cruces.
Margarita Gonzalez, was arrested on more than a dozen charges in Texas alone. El Paso investigators found over half a million dollars in Medicaid overpayments connected to her unlicensed nurse activities going back to 2024.
In May, she was indicted by a Doña Ana County grand jury after an investigation by the New Mexico Department of Justice’s Medicaid Fraud Bureau. Prosecutors allege Gonzalez assumed the identities of nurses in Texas to gain employment at four Las Cruces nursing facilities and illegally provided patient care. According to the investigation, in one incident, she nearly administered an incorrect insulin dose that could have caused a serious incident or resulted in death of a patient.
Gonzalez was charged with 34 counts of misconduct, including identity theft, nursing without a license, abuse of a resident, distribution of controlled substances to a minor and fraud totaling more than $25,000.
Court records in New Mexico show a jury trial for Gonzalez is scheduled for August 23. The woman was arrested previously in May also in El Paso County on over a dozen charges of violating nursing regulations.
