BY JAY WEAVERjweaver@MiamiHerald.comAlmost anyone can operate a Medicare-licensed equipment supply company -- even a convicted murderer.
Guillermo Denis Gonzalez, convicted of second-degree murder in 1992 and released from prison in 2004, bought a Medicare-licensed healthcare equipment company two years later.
On Friday, the Hialeah man pleaded guilty in federal court to defrauding the government healthcare program by submitting $586,953 in false claims for supplies that were never provided to patients by his company, DG Medical Equipment, during 2007.
But that's the least of Gonzalez's problems. After the 65-year-old enters his plea in federal court, he's heading over to state court -- to be prosecuted on another first-degree murder charge.
Last year, Gonzalez was charged with the slaying of Sergio I. Quintero, 58, of Hollywood in an argument over money.
Hialeah investigators gave this account of the events leading to Gonzalez's May 2008 arrest: Quintero was at Gonzalez's Hialeah home sitting in his kitchen when the convict ``became enraged'' and punched the jeweler. With a kitchen knife, he stabbed Quintero, then stabbed him twice more in the torso, according to an arrest report.
Gonzalez dismembered Quintero, while "periodically'' crushing the corpse's face with a mallet, the report said.
Someone digging through trash found Quintero's left leg in a commercial trash bin in a warehouse alley. The rest of his body parts were found in six black garbage bags in three dumpsters on Hialeah's east side, police said.
"Gonzalez cut off Quintero's head, both legs, both arms, both hands and torso,'' Detective Jose Proveyer wrote in his report.
Gonzalez confessed to killing Quintero, Hialeah Police Chief Mark Overton said shortly after the 2008 arrest.
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