The Florida Supreme Court Thursday rejected a referee's recommendation of six months' suspension of Miami attorney Arturo Dopazo III, found guilty of participating in a “patient-client recruiting scheme” with a nonlawyer.

Instead the high court, which has the final word on attorney discipline, imposed a harsher sentence: one year's suspension for the lawyer, who'd faced prior disciplinary action for solicitation.

The case against Dopazo, which stemmed from an FBI tip to the Florida Bar, comes as federal investigators undertake a sweeping probe of South Florida personal injury attorneys. The investigations have resulted in at least six arrests and a slew of felony charges against lawyers in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

A line in Dopazo's court file suggests his case is the latest confirmation of law enforcement's scrutiny of medical and automobile insurance claims involving clinicians and legal professionals. It notes that in December 2011, “the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent the bar materials concerning the investigation and subsequent indictment of two nonlawyers for their involvement in an illegal patient-client recruiting scheme with medical clinics involving local lawyers.”

The tip led the bar to suspect Dopazo of paying for client referrals. In the final hearing of the disciplinary proceeding, it presented evidence of 31 payments to a clinic, Miami-Dade Services Inc., as proof of the attorney's complicity. But Dopazo explained the payments as legitimate reimbursement for medical services to his clients, leading the bar to admit it had no “smoking gun” linking him to a fraud.

The bar's 2015 complaint alleged misconduct and violation of Rule 4-7.18, which governs direct contact with prospective clients. It stemmed in part from Dopazo's interaction with Penny Jones, a woman whose son suffered traumatic brain injury in a car crash. It alleged Dopazo approached Jones while she was vulnerable and at her son's bedside at Jackson Memorial Hospital Ryder Trauma Center.

“There was no prior relationship between Jones and Dopazo, nor were his legal services sought by her or anyone acting on her behalf,” according to the unsigned Florida Supreme Court opinion issued Oct. 5. “The referee found that Dopazo's appearance at the hospital was completely unexpected, and while she did apparently retain his services at that time, Jones' limited education and fragile emotional condition … likely rendered her unable to make a rational decision whether to retain counsel or reject Dopazo's efforts to sign her up as a client.”

Dopazo claimed his office had called him and told him to go see Jones in the hospital intensive care unit. The referee rejected his explanation but found the bar failed to present “clear and convincing evidence that Dopazo was involved in the patient-client recruiting scheme.

The referee found the attorney guilty, and recommended the Supreme Court suspend his law license for six months.

Dopazo was admitted to the bar in November 1996. His bar file shows no disciplinary action in the last 10 years, but the new Supreme Court ruling points to a prior ethics case outside that window.

“Dopazo entered a consent judgment to a public reprimand for solicitation on August 24, 2004, for conduct that occurred in 2002,” the justices wrote in accepting the referee's findings, but opting instead to double the recommended sentence. “The solicitation of Jones occurred in March or April 2007, which was not even three years after the consent judgment for solicitation. At the time Dopazo solicited Jones, his public reprimand should have been fresh in his mind, especially because he committed the same rule violation of solicitation a second time.”

Neither Dopazo nor his attorney, Young Berman Karpf & Gonzalez partner Andrew Berman, responded to requests for comment.