Full Investigation · Tijuana & San Diego · 1983–2010

Convicted for the Billing, Not the Cancer: Geronimo Rubio and the American Metabolic Institute

For a quarter of a century a Tijuana doctor and his San Diego business partner sold cancer “vaccines” made from animal tissue to patients who had run out of options. Mexican inspectors shut the clinic twice. What finally sent both men to prison was not what they did to patients. It was false bills to American insurers and unreported income.

By Terry Polevoy, MD · QuackeryWatch.com · Rebuilt from this site's 2004 cancer archive, October 2026

The record at a glance

Who: Dr. Geronimo Rubio, a Mexican physician (University of Baja California), medical director; William R. Fry, co-owner and director.
Where: American Metabolic Institute (AMI), offices in Bonita, California; Hospital San Martin, La Mesa district, Tijuana. Later marketed as the Rubio Cancer Center.
What it sold: “Vaccines” and injections derived from animal tissue, shark-cartilage enemas and other alternative cancer treatments, for tens of thousands of dollars.
Mexico: Closed for illegal alternative therapies in 2001, reopened, and closed again. Allowed back on condition it offer only conventional care.
United States: FBI and IRS arrests, May 2004. Guilty pleas to health-care fraud conspiracy and false tax returns, June 2007. Fry sentenced to 14 months, Rubio to 12, on 8 February 2010.

The business

The American Metabolic Institute opened in 1983. The arrangement was the one that ran most of the Tijuana cancer trade: an office on the American side to take the calls, the money and the insurance paperwork, and a hospital a few kilometres south of the border where American rules did not apply. AMI's office was in Bonita, a San Diego suburb; its hospital, Hospital San Martin, was a small two-storey building in Tijuana's La Mesa district. Fry and Rubio owned and controlled both.

What patients were offered was described in AMI's own promotion as cutting-edge immunotherapy. What Mexican inspectors and American reporters found was injections of extracts from animal tissue — the Los Angeles Times described chicken-liver extracts and guinea-pig tissue at a clinic called San Martin — along with shark-cartilage enemas and an array of other unproven treatments. None had been tested in a clinical trial. In 2002 the head of the U.S. National Cancer Institute's alternative-medicine office reported that he had written to more than 150 clinics inviting them to submit their best cases for review, and that no Tijuana clinic had replied.

Silas

Silas Luciano, age 6

Edmonds, Washington · died at the clinic, 14 February 2001

Jim and Rhonda Luciano brought their six-year-old son to AMI on the promise of a breakthrough cancer vaccine made from animal tissue. A few weeks into treatment, Rubio showed them CT scans that he said proved the boy's cancer had disappeared.

Silas kept getting worse. His parents took him to a conventional Tijuana hospital for their own tests, which found his body riddled with cancer. When they brought those results back, they told the San Diego Union-Tribune, Rubio assured them their son was fine and offered a new, stronger course of experimental treatment. Two days later Silas died at the clinic.

The family had spent about $90,000 and three months there. Jim Luciano told the paper that desperate parents will do anything they are told might help, and that all they wanted was for someone to say it could be done — which, he said, is exactly what Rubio always said.

Mexico acts — twice

July 2001
Five months after Silas died, Baja California health authorities closed AMI for offering illegal alternative therapies, including the tissue-derived “vaccines”, during a wider crackdown on unregistered cancer clinics.
Summer 2001
The clinic defied the order and moved patients to a Tijuana hotel. Regulators shut it down again. The Los Angeles Times reported in August that a clinic named San Martin had been closed a second time, about two weeks after its first closure, for continuing to take patients.
Later in 2001
AMI was allowed to reopen on the condition that it provide only conventional medical services.
February 2002
The Union-Tribune interviewed Americans at the clinic who said they were still being treated with tissue vaccines, shark-cartilage enemas and other alternative treatments. A year after the crackdown, the paper concluded, its impact had faded: Baja California had about 30 inspectors for 500 clinics.

The United States acts — on the paperwork

In May 2004 agents of the FBI and the IRS arrested Rubio and Fry at AMI's Bonita office on an indictment for insurance fraud and tax fraud. The head of the FBI's San Diego office said publicly that the defendants had capitalized on people's vulnerabilities in their most desperate hours, and that what they had done was the unthinkable.

The case took six years. In June 2007 both men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health-care fraud and to filing false federal income tax returns. They admitted submitting false bills to American insurance companies and substantially under-reporting their own income. On 8 February 2010, Judge John A. Houston of the U.S. District Court in San Diego sentenced them:

	William R. Fry	Geronimo Rubio
Age at sentencing	70	51
Prison	14 months	12 months
Supervised release	3 years	3 years
Back taxes owed	$314,159 (1997–2003), plus interest and penalties	$356,311 (1998–2003), plus interest and penalties
Restitution to insurers	$63,237

Look at what the restitution covers. The court ordered $63,237 repaid to insurance companies. The Lucianos alone paid about $90,000. Nothing in the federal case compensated a single patient or family, and nothing in it was a finding about whether the treatment worked. In the U.S. Attorney's own announcement, the lesson drawn was about the integrity of the tax system. As with Al Capone, it was the books that brought them down.

After prison

Rubio did not leave the field. Online profiles for a Rubio Cancer Center, headquartered in Tijuana, describe him as an immunotherapy specialist with a quarter of a century of experience, offering vaccines made from each patient's own cancer cells, stem-cell-based treatments, a special diet and “nontoxic medications”, sometimes combined with low-dose chemotherapy and radiation. None of those pages mentions the 2010 conviction. Whether the centre is still treating patients in 2026 has not been confirmed for this page.

The Canadian connection

When this site first wrote about Rubio in 2004, Toronto's Consumer Health Organization — the charity behind the Total Health show — had been listing his clinic among its recommended treatment centres for years. It was the same organization whose show billed Hulda Clark as a speaker. Canadians with cancer did not have to find Tijuana on their own. A Canadian registered charity pointed the way.

Related on QuackeryWatch

Sources

U.S. Attorney, Southern District of California. “Two plead guilty to health care fraud and federal income tax felonies” (sentencing announcement), 9 February 2010. Case 04cr1276. Also in the Department of Justice Tax Division release.
Onell R. Soto and Sandra Dibble. Report of the arrests of Rubio and Fry. San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 May 2004.
Sandra Dibble and Penni Crabtree. “Borderline medicine.” San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 February 2002 (the Luciano family; continued alternative treatment after the 2001 closures).
“Baja California Health Department begins shutting down ‘alternative treatment’ centers.” California Healthline, 13 August 2001, summarizing the Los Angeles Times.
“San Diego Union-Tribune examines ‘controversial’ alternative cancer clinics.” California Healthline, 27 February 2002 (the NCI letters; inspection figures).
Stephen Barrett, MD. “A skeptical look at Geronimo Rubio, M.D. and his treatment programs.” Quackwatch.
Rubio Cancer Center, about.me profile (undated), accessed October 2026.
Consumer Health Organization, clinic links page, as recorded on this site in 2004.

The office manager arrested with Rubio and Fry in 2004 is not named here; this site has not found the outcome of that case. The 2010 convictions were for health-care fraud conspiracy and tax offences, not for the treatments themselves, and this page does not suggest otherwise. Corrections are welcome and are recorded on the page.