Crime Blog
Published:
Kevin Krause
Dr. Jacques Roy was disgraced by the suspension of his medical license and had a tough time finding steady work as a physician, so he crafted a plan, prosecutors said.
Roy, 58, decided to orchestrate a massive Medicare fraud scheme, make as much money as fast as possible and then disappear, they said.
The former Rockwall physician’s federal trial began this week in federal court in Dallas. He is accused of recruiting fake patients — including some of Dallas’ homeless — to submit $375 million worth of bogus home health care services.
Roy and his cohorts wooed about 11,000 Medicare patients with promises of cash, food stamps and groceries, prosecutors said. They called it the largest home health fraud ever orchestrated by a single doctor.
“A doctor cannot care for 11,000 patients at once,” Assistant U.S. Attorney P.J. Meitl said during opening statements on Wednesday.
Robert Scardino, a defense attorney for Roy, said his client “made house calls to poor, sick people” and is being unfairly made into a poster boy for fraud.
“He was one of the hardest-working doctors in the country,” Scardino said. “They’ve picked the wrong person.”
He said Roy sometimes saw 10 to 14 patients a day, often in low-income areas.
“That’s what put him on their radar,” Scardino said.
Roy has since lost his license. He faces life in prison if convicted.
Six others were also charged in 2012 with bilking Medicare. Three of them have pleaded guilty for their roles in the scheme and are expected to testify against Roy.
Prosecutors said they intend to call about 70 witnesses and introduce about 500 exhibits. The trial is expected to last at least a month.
Roy has been in federal custody since his 2012 arrest. A judge denied his request for bond after prosecutors presented evidence that Roy had been hiding money offshore under a fake identity and was planning to flee.
When agents searched his home in 2011, they found a book titled Hide You’re A$$ET$ and Disappear, A Step-by-Step Guide to Vanishing Without a Trace as well as other publications about hiding money in offshore bank accounts. Agents also found two different fake identities with Roy’s photo along with passport documents from Canada, where he was born.
Roy, who has U.S. and Canadian citizenship, had an “extensively planned exit strategy,” prosecutors said in a filing.
Steady stream of referrals
Roy’s Medistat office in DeSoto handled more home health care visits to patients from January 2006 to November 2011 than any physician’s office in the country, federal authorities said.
Medistat was an association of health care providers that mostly provided home health certifications and conducted home visits for patients needing care.
Hundreds of patient care visits were logged each day by more than 500 home health care agencies routing their patients to Roy, who billed Medicare and the state’s Medicaid program for the bogus services, according to the indictment.
Roy didn’t sign medical documents for his patients, Meitl said. He set up a full-time forgery operation where people were hired to sign his name, he said. When Roy and his family went to France for a vacation, the Medicare billings continued, Meitl said.
“The essence of the conspiracy charged in the indictment is that Dr. Roy was the spout from which Medicare money flowed,” Meitl said in a court filing. “If a home health care agency brought him beneficiaries, he would authorize services.”
Nurses falsified medical documents to make it seem patients qualified for home health care services, prosecutors said. To qualify, patients must be unable to leave their homes.
Yet some of Roy’s “patients” were found working on their cars when investigators approached them, according to prosecutors.
Scardino said the law does not require that such patients be confined to their homes. They can go to church or to the grocery store, he said.
Scardino said his client treated people. He said records from a tracking device the FBI put on Roy’s car showed that Roy saw more than 1,000 patients in four months.
But when Roy’s ability to bill Medicare was suspended in June 2011 because of suspected fraud, Roy used another company, Medcare HouseCalls, to continue billing for bogus services, prosecutors said.
Meitl said during opening statements that Roy’s son will testify how he helped his father cover up his crimes using that company.
Three North Texas home health agencies that prosecutors say were involved in the conspiracy were Apple of Your Eye Healthcare Services Inc., Ultimate Care Home Health Services Inc., and Charry Home Care Services Inc.
Wilbert Veasey Jr., owner of Apple of Your Eye, went door to door in search of Medicare beneficiaries to sign up, Meitl said.
Holding a Bible, Veasey knocked on doors and said, “God wants you to have this health care,” Meitl said. If that didn’t work, Veasey would trick them, he said.
Veasey was caught “red-handed” when he tried to recruit someone whose relative worked for the government, records show.
Charity Eleda, a nurse and co-owner of Charry Home Care, had a different source of “patients,” authorities said.
She paid recruiters $50 to walk into The Bridge homeless shelter in Dallas and promise free meals to get recruits, records show. She would “buy them McDonald’s and send them on their way,” Meitl said.
Eleda continued to try to recruit the shelter’s homeless even after being kicked out, records show. She had to be “chased from the premises on multiple occasions,” court documents said.
Meitl said not one of The Bridge’s homeless qualified for home health care services.
Roy visited The Bridge to “treat” patients at a picnic table, court records show.
Veasey, Eleda and Cynthia Stiger, co-owner of Apple of Your Eye, are being tried with Roy.
Roy also is accused of paying people to start health care companies he controlled so he could get more patient referrals, a violation of federal law. His live-in nanny was one of those who turned down his offer to “make a quick $5,000,” records show.
And Roy performed unnecessary home visits and ordered unnecessary medical services, according to records.
‘Humiliating’ suspension
Roy earned his medical degree in 1980 in Quebec, Canada. He received his Texas medical license in 1984 and worked as an emergency room doctor in the Dallas area in the late 1990s.
Roy’s medical license was suspended in 2001 after it was revealed that a woman with whom he had an affair died in a car accident. Her use of hydrocodone contributed to the crash, court records show, and she got the pain pills illegally from Roy.
Roy admitted to prescribing the woman 110 tablets in 30 days, according to court records. He kept no medical records of it and did not examine the woman, records show. The medical board placed him on probation for five years.
As a result of his suspension, Roy had difficulty finding steady and respectable work, prosecutors say. And he performed poorly in the jobs he did get, court records show.
Dallas County fired him after only six months for “poor performance.” And while working for an erectile dysfunction chain, Roy was sued for the medical treatment he provided and lost the case.
At one point, he stopped practicing medicine for a brief period to focus on stock trading, court records show.
Roy began his criminal enterprise in 2004, prosecutors said.
“Once he was released from his suspension, Dr. Roy steamed ahead with the fraudulent scheme,” Meitl wrote in a court filing.
Roy’s suspension and “tumultuous” probation motivated him to start and grow the conspiracy, Meitl said.
“The suspension and probation humiliated Dr. Roy and damaged Dr. Roy’s reputation within the medical community and the Dallas area,” Meitl said in the filing.
Roy was no longer respected and had fewer opportunities to practice medicine, he said. So he turned to less-experienced “upstart home health agencies” that did not have ties to the medical community, Meitl said.
Roy knew that more discipline from the state medical board would mean the end of his practice, so he decided to make as much money as he could in a short time, Meitl said.
“He’s frustrated because he hasn’t achieved what he thought he would,” Meitl said.
Investigators have frozen at least $4 million of Roy’s estimated $19 million in alleged proceeds from the scam.