A Dallas anesthesiologist who prosecutors said was facing the possible loss of his medical license and who owed millions to the IRS, was convicted today for injecting dangerous drugs into patient IV bags, leading to one death and numerous cardiac emergencies, the Justice Department announced.
Raynaldo Riviera Ortiz Jr., 60, who has been a practicing anesthesiologist for 26 years, was placed on administrative supervision in August for an incident from November 2020.was charged by criminal complaint in September 2023 and indicted the following month on charges related to tampering with IV bags used at a local surgical center.
After eight days of trial and seven hours of deliberation, a jury of seven women and five men, convicted him of four counts of tampering with consumer products resulting in serious bodily injury, one count of tampering with a consumer product and five counts of intentional adulteration of a drug. A date of sentencing has not been set.
“The facts brought out at trial in this case are particularly disturbing,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “The department will work with its law enforcement partners to hold accountable anyone who puts patients’ lives at risk by tampering with critical medical products.”
“Dr. Ortiz cloaked himself in the white coat of a healer, but instead of curing pain, he inflicted it,” stated U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton for the Northern District of Texas.
“He assembled ticking time bombs, then sat in wait as those medical time bombs went off one by one, toxic cocktails flowing into the veins of patients who were often at their most vulnerable, lying unconscious on the operating table. We saw the patients testify. Their pain, their fear and their trauma was palpable in that courtroom.”
“Patients expect that their doctors will use only safe and effective medical products during their surgeries. When illicit tampering occurs, serious harm and even death can result,” expressed by Special Agent in Charge Charles L. Grinstead of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations (FDA-OIC).
“Working with our law enforcement partners, we will continue to monitor, investigate and bring to justice those who would risk patients’ health and safety.”
According to evidence presented at trial, between May and August 2022, numerous patients at Surgicare North Dallas suffered cardiac emergencies during routine medical procedures performed by various doctors.
About one month after the unexplained emergencies began when a 55-year-old fellow anesthesiologist Dr. Melanie Kaspar in June 2022. Kaspar reportedly took an IV bag home to rehydrate herself and died in front of her husband. “She inserted the IV into her vein and almost immediately had a serious cardiac event and died,” the order says. Her autopsy found a lethal dose of bupivacaine in her system; a nerve blocking agent that is rarely abused but is often used during the administration of anesthesia. The drug is meant to be injected into the spinal cord and is known to cause “severe cardio- and neurotoxicity” and death when injected into the veins, according to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices in Canada.
Ortiz is implicated, however, he is not charged in the death.
In August 2022 doctors at the surgical care center began to suspect tainted IV bags had caused the repeated crises after an 18-year-old patient had to be rushed to the intensive care unit in critical condition during a routine sinus surgery.
The administrator at the Baylor Scott and White Surgicare in North Dallas, Ashley Burks, became emotional remembering the day, saying she called the center’s governing chair and told him, “It is (expletive) happening again.”
She apologized to the jury for her language.
The teen’s parents were told he had a 50/50 chance of surviving.
Dr. Daniel Wohlgelernter interviewed with local outlet FOX 4 when he found out his 18-year-old grandson, Jack, had complications from routine surgery and ended up on life support. He recalled immediately knowing a medication of some kind had to be to blame.
The young man thankfully pulled through the ordeal and his grandfather, a Los Angeles cardiologist, continued to give insight on the incident in the interview, with FOX 4, “The toxic agents injected into the IV fluid initially made his blood pressure go sky-high, impossibly high. The kind of numbers you never see,” Dr. Daniel Wohlgelernter conveyed to the outlet.
After the teen’s cardiac emergency, Burks testified they looked at the IV bag and found a hole in it.
“We were stunned,” she stated.
A local lab analyzed fluid from the bag used during the teenager’s surgery and found bupivacaine (a nerve-blocking agent), epinephrine (a stimulant) and lidocaine (an anesthetic) — a drug cocktail that could have caused the boy’s symptoms, which included very high blood pressure, cardiac dysfunction and pulmonary edema. The lab also observed a puncture in the bag.
Ortiz surreptitiously injected IV bags of saline with epinephrine, bupivacaine and other drugs, placed them into a warming bin at the facility, and waited for them to be used in colleagues’ surgeries, knowing their patients would experience dangerous complications.
Surveillance video introduced into evidence showed Ortiz repeatedly retrieving IV bags from the warming bin and replacing them shortly thereafter, not long before the bags were carried into operating rooms where patients experienced complications. Video also showed Ortiz mixing vials of medication and watching as victims were wheeled out by emergency staff.
In one video, Ortiz is there watching as a patient is wheeled out by paramedics while experiencing an emergency after prosecutors say she received one of the tainted bags during a simple cosmetic procedure.
That patient later testified when she woke up in the hospital, she thought that she was going to die.
Ortiz’ defense attorney John Nicholson called out the government blaming the ‘most convenient’ person instead of investigating other medical staff who accessed the warming bin or handled IV bags.
Nicholson said while Ortiz’s demeanor on video may appear suspicious, it does not mean he is guilty of any crime, stressing he was never alone when the bags were allegedly injected.
Nicholson pushed back on the alleged motive given by the government, saying Ortiz was behind on his taxes for years without resorting to criminal conduct. Ortiz is being blamed for the unusual activity at the surgical center because he is the “convenient person to blame and he’s on video,” he also claimed this case to be one of “confirmation bias,” where a person only sees where they want to see, Nicholson added to his conjecture.
The government is not required to provide jurors a motive but did allege a disgruntled Ortiz sought revenge and was trying to shift blame on other people, because of the disciplinary investigations by the Texas Medical Board and because he faced serious financial problems.
Evidence presented at trial showed that Ortiz was facing disciplinary action at the time for an alleged medical mistake made in one of his own surgeries, and that he potentially faced losing his medical license. A patient required CPR after Ortiz administered anesthesia, which led the facility, North Garland Surgery Center, to revoke his clinical privileges, board records show.
At trial, doctors testified about the confusion they felt when their patients’ blood pressures suddenly skyrocketed. Reviewing medical records, they all noted the emergencies occurred shortly after new IV bags had been hung. Patients recalled waking up unexpectedly intubated in intensive care units they had been transported to via emergency medical transportation services, in pain and in fear for their lives.
Ashely Burks testified that they were “desperately” trying to figure out why so many patients were experiencing medical emergencies during what should have been routine procedures.
“We were perplexed because the incidents were happening under different doctors and nurses,” said Ashley Burks, choking back tears.
Burks testified they even had equipment tested.
“We were desperately trying to figure out what was going on,” Burks said on the stand Tuesday.
Ortiz, reportedly, had also been arrested on allegations that he abused women and shot a pet dog. He was convicted of shooting a neighbor’s dog with a pellet gun in 2015 and accused of assaulting at least two women.
In December 2014, Ortiz and his then-girlfriend, the mother of his child, got into an argument in front of their neighbor, Roxanne Bogdan, and he was arrested for alleged assault.
The ex obtained a protective order against Ortiz, and Bogdan testified on her behalf. He blamed the neighbor for their split, according to prosecutors.
About four months later, in April 2015, Bogdan heard a “very loud sports car” pull into Ortiz’s driveway, then gunfire and her dog yelping.
“She ran into her backyard and saw her dog’s chest covered in blood,” according to court papers. The pooch survived.
Ortiz has at least three Corvettes, whose engines have a distinct sound, according to the records. Ortiz was convicted at trial and sentenced to 25 days in jail and two years of community supervision.
A medical board record says he has a “history of violence toward women” — including a 1999 arrest for allegedly assaulting a spouse. In 2005, a different girlfriend obtained a protective order against him.
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