Seven ambulances, 22 professional stamps, suturing instructions by phone: the Florencio Varela network accused of putting drivers to work as doctors, 40 raids in October 2026

Argentina's public health insurers, PAMI for pensioners and IOMA for Buenos Aires provincial employees, contract private ambulance companies to move and treat patients. Those contracts assume that the people in the ambulance are the registered doctors and nurses whose stamps appear on the paperwork. An investigation of almost five years in Buenos Aires province has produced a case in which, prosecutors allege, that assumption did not hold.

According to Perfil (16 October 2026), about 40 simultaneous raids on 14 October 2026 in the City of Buenos Aires and the districts of Florencio Varela, Avellaneda, Quilmes, La Plata, Berazategui, Tres de Febrero and Lomas de Zamora led to nine detentions and 20 apprehensions. The case, opened in November 2021, is run by Unidad Funcional de Instrucción y Juicio N° 1 under prosecutor Darío Provisionato, with Juzgado de Garantías N° 8 of Florencio Varela. Perfil reported that a couple of Peruvian and Argentine nationality allegedly set up a private medical assistance and ambulance company in Florencio Varela that won contracts with IOMA, PAMI and OSUTHGRA, and that investigators believe some services were overbilled, never performed or carried out by people without adequate medical training. Licensed professionals allegedly lent their names, stamps and registration numbers in exchange for regular payments. Investigators reviewed more than 30,000 hours of wiretaps, and on at least one occasion, Perfil said, coordinators explained by telephone to people inside an ambulance how to suture open wounds.

Diario Panorama (15 October 2026) reported that drivers and assistants allegedly acted as doctors and nurses, including on 12 and 24-hour shifts, that the borrowed registrations were used to back medical records, diagnoses and prescriptions, and that linked accounting firms allegedly issued false invoices, with money moved through shell companies, simulated contracts and altered balance sheets. Both outlets said part of the billing carried inflated prices. Both also listed the seizures: seven ambulances, US$19,368 and ARS 5,780,200 in cash, prescription pads, 65 stamps of health institutions, 22 professional stamps, surgical instruments, uniforms, medicines, 57 mobile phones and several computers. The offences under investigation are illegal practice of medicine, fraud, use of others' registrations and money laundering, and investigators are still establishing each person's role.

The mechanism here was not a forged diploma but a rented one. Real doctors' numbers and stamps were allegedly supplied to the company and applied to work done by unqualified staff, so every document looked legitimate to the insurer paying for it. The check that failed was between the stamp and the hands.

For students the warning is about what a registration is worth and what it can be turned into. Never lend your future licence number, stamp or signature to an employer or an agency, whatever the monthly payment; in this case the lending of registrations is itself part of what prosecutors are examining. For patients and families, if the person treating you in an ambulance or a clinic cannot show a registration that matches their own name and face, ask for someone who can.