By John Tunison
The Grand Rapids Press
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A man who posed as an ambulance medic for an evening and helped with patients—the latest in a long history of fraud and making false statements—has been sentenced to nine months in jail.
Anthony Mario Fortuna, 42, was sentenced Tuesday, May 15 in Kent County Circuit Court for impersonating a medical services employee.
Fortuna on Jan. 19 received permission to be on a “ride along” in an American Medical Response ambulance.
Police said he was an acquaintance of a staff member.
However, Fortuna told workers he was a former AMR employee in New York. He also somehow had access to an AMR uniform that he wore to the ride-along.
According to Judge Donald Johnston, Fortuna “started an IV on one patient and administered meds to perhaps some others.”
Grand Rapids police said that throughout the ride-along, Fortuna acted as though he was a paramedic and helped with the loading and off-loading of patients.
Police said that a later investigation showed that AMR had no record of any past employment for Fortuna.
Fortuna is no stranger to falsehoods.
He was sentenced to five years in federal prison in 2013 for falsely warning of plots to blow up the Gerald R. Ford Federal Building and the Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert. Fortuna was released in late September, 2017, a Bureau of Prisons database shows.
He also has an earlier federal conviction for making false statements about an alleged murder-for-hire.
Johnston noted that Fortuna’s past is filled with a “fair amount of flim-flammery” and recited a criminal record that includes forgery, shoplifting, petty larceny, impersonating a public employee, defrauding an innkeeper, credit card fraud and reporting a false alarm.
Fortuna appeared in court Tuesday in a wheelchair and indicated he has a heart condition and is on a transplant list.
He apologized for his behavior and said he was “totally out of line.”
At the time of the January offense, Fortuna was on federal probation and is awaiting the possibility of more incarceration in federal court.
Copyright 2018 The Grand Rapids Press