New details continue to emerge about the troubled Dallas anesthesiologist Dr. Raynaldo Ortiz following his recent arrest for allegedly tainting IV bags, which apparently caused several severe medical complications and one death.
The Dallas Express first broke the story that linked Ortiz to the recently shuttered Baylor Scott & White Surgicare center in North Dallas, where federal prosecutors accuse Ortiz of doping IV bags with a mixture of drugs designed to cause patients to suffer medical emergencies.
Following Ortiz’s arrest and subsequent arraignment, The Dallas Express reported on the details that continued to come out about the disturbing history of a man prosecutors are calling a “medical terrorist.”
Before the Texas Medical Board suspended Ortiz’s license on September 9, it disciplined him after a patient required CPR and “emergent transport” in 2020, claiming he had “failed to meet the standard of care for a patient during a procedure.”
Consequently, Ortiz had to be monitored by another physician for a period of time.
The Texas Medical Board also dinged him publicly back in 2018 for failing to report that he had been criminally convicted for animal cruelty.
The conviction stemmed from when he shot his neighbor’s dog with a pellet gun in 2015, allegedly in retaliation against the neighbor for helping Ortiz’s girlfriend move out of Ortiz’s house and testifying against him in a domestic abuse case. As originally reported by The Dallas Express, that particular case was not a one-off, though.
Multiple women have actually accused the disgraced anesthesiologist, at least three of whom reported him to law enforcement or sued him for alleged death threats and assaults in years prior, according to Texas Medical Board documents.
One woman with whom Ortiz fathered a son claimed that he had abused her for years.
“He has threatened to kill me before, even told me how he would do it, including cutting my finger off to get the ring,” she stated in an affidavit obtained by NBC 5. “He said the only thing stopping him from killing me was he would go to jail.”
Ortiz is sitting in jail now, though, having been denied bail by a federal judge last week after pleading not guilty to various federal charges related to the alleged doping of IV bags, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Ortiz is also being represented by a public defender, despite being apprehended with roughly $7,000 in cash.
The median annual salary for an anesthesiologist in Texas is about $400,000, which makes it unclear why Ortiz claimed he cannot pay for his own defense.
However, Collin County tax lien documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News indicate that Ortiz apparently owes the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) upwards of $4.1 million in unpaid taxes, a debt accumulated between 2015 and 2020.
The Dallas Express will continue to follow Ortiz’s case as it develops.
