Eight people have been indicted on charges of practicing medicine without a license as part of the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s investigation into a Houston-area midwife accused of providing illegal abortions, the attorney general’s office announced Wednesday.
The group allegedly worked under Maria Rojas, the owner of four clinics in Harris and Waller counties, who was arrested in March and accused of performing abortions on two women in violation of Texas’ near-total ban on the procedure.
The indictments were handed up Sept. 26, according to Waller County court records. Charging documents weren’t immediately available.
The eight people charged with practicing medicine without a license were Yaimara Hernandez Alvarez, Alina Valeron Leon, Dalia Coromoto Yanez, Yhonder Lebrun Acosta, Liunet Grandales Estrada, Gerardo Otero Aguero, Sabiel Bosch Gongora and Jose Manuel Cendan Ley, according to Paxton’s office.
Only one of them, Ley, is charged with providing an abortion. Ley was arrested alongside Rojas earlier this year.
Ley allegedly told investigators that he was trained as a doctor in Cuba and allowed customers at Rojas’ clinics to believe he was working as one in the United States, even though he was working without a license. Another man, Rubbildo Labanino Matos, is accused of allowing Rojas to use his credentials as a nurse practitioner to order medical procedures and issue prescriptions.
Rojas was indicted on 15 felony charges in June, including three counts of performing an abortion. The abortion charges are related to the treatment of two women, identified in court documents as E.G. and N.M.
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Rojas is accused of performing a successful abortion on N.M., but prosecutors have released no details about that case beyond the indictment.
The 12 other charges against Rojas are related to accusations she hired people to work at her clinics while they were practicing medicine without a license.
She has pleaded not guilty. Her lawyers have argued in civil court filings that the AG’s office can’t prove that an abortion occurred and said that the medication she is accused of giving to E.G. is also used to treat miscarriages.
See here for the previous update. As a reminder, we do not accept any claim about these cases from prosecutors at face value. We wait until the defense has a chance to speak first. Given how little actual information has been released – no details at all about the most explosive charges, for example – that’s just the prudent thing to do.