Max Mehta was charged in 2004 with soliciting a minor for sexual assault and is now working in Victoria

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A radiologist who fled the US before he could face trial on a child sex predator charge has been practising in Australia for several years, with no intervention from numerous legal and medical authorities.

Dr Max Mehta, 45, was charged in Dallas, Texas, in May 2004 for allegedly grooming a 15-year-old deaf girl – actually a police officer posing as a child – for sex in an online chatroom.

He was arrested when he arrived at an address he believed to be the girl’s home, and was charged with soliciting a minor for sexual assault, which carries a jail term of up to 10 years.

Mehta is now working as a radiologist in Shepparton in country Victoria under the name of Robert Taylor. A former colleague, Dr Rauf Yousef, said he has alerted several authorities to Mehta’s history in the US but none have acted, raising questions over the stringency of background checks when foreign doctors apply to work in Australia.

Mehta was only asked to sign a statutory declaration stating he had not committed any offences, but it appears the criminal background checks did not go beyond that.

Mehta skipped bail of $100,000 and absconded to New Zealand in 2005 before he could face court. Because he had not been convicted or appeared in court, he passed police, immigration and work history checks, and in 2007 he changed his name by deed poll to Robert Taylor.

In 2008, he was granted New Zealand citizenship.

In 2009, Mehta moved to Australia on a Trans-Tasman New Zealand visa and is now working as a radiologist with Goulburn Valley Imaging Group in Shepparton, Victoria, a job he began in November after stints practising in Western Australia and NSW.

On Thursday, the medical director of Echuca Regional Health (ERH), Grant Howlett, ordered Goulburn Valley Imaging Group (GVI), which supplies medical imaging personnel to the hospital, not to let Mehta return to the hospital.

“Taylor visited the hospital intermittently as a radiologist and he has not been scheduled to return,” Howlett said. “We have told GVI we require other radiologists than him to attend.”

In January 2013, Mehta was found to have forged signatures on medical accreditation documents to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) and the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Radiologists.

After an investigation, his medical registration was suspended and he was ordered to complete an ethics course in April the same year, after which he was readmitted to the medical registration board, allowing him to continue working.

At no point has Mehta disclosed his child sex offence charges or change of name when applying for Australian jobs.

Dr Yousaf is one of the practitioners whose signature Mehta forged.

Over the past 12 months, Yousaf, a radiologist, says he has sent information about Mehta’s background to politicians, state and federal police, AHPRA, a number of medical authorities and boards, the FBI and police agencies in Dallas.

He became suspicious about Mehta, his former colleague, after being alerted to multiple forgeries of his signature on a range of documents over several years.

“If it was a one-off forgery, you might put it down to him being lazy or irresponsible, but to see so many forgeries over a number of years, it really raised questions about what he was doing,” Yousaf said.

He investigated further, and found evidence of Mehta’s name change and the US criminal charge. Mehta had also fled before. In 2004, he absconded from his native country of India to the US pending payment of a court fine for spousal abuse under the Dowry Act.

Yousaf said he was assured in January by the United States Marshals Service for the Northern District of Texas that an international arrest warrant was being sought so Mehta could be apprehended and extradited to the US for criminal prosecution.

But Yousaf said he has heard conflicting updates from police, and was separately told extradition of Mehta was unlikely to be pursued given it was not among the most serious cases and the resources it would require.

He said he was frustrated that so many authorities had failed to act over such a long period, especially as the arrest warrant is still active, and that he was forced to do much of the further investigating himself.

“They all cite jurisdictional issues and have sat on their hands over this,” he told Guardian Australia. “All claim it is someone else’s issue to deal with.

“In his role he would have many patients who are children coming in with a range of issues, and he should never have been allowed to have access to kids while he faces this charge.”

It raised questions of how many other medical professionals with suspect backgrounds had passed through checks by authorities undetected, he said. All Mehta had to do was sign a statutory declaration stating he had no criminal charges, he said, with no more thorough checks carried out.

Mehta declined to comment to Guardian Australia when asked why he left the US and why he had not disclosed the charges or name change.

The Australian federal police and the Victorian police were unable to comment on the case. Dallas Police Department and the US Marshals Service did not return requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, said: “The Department of Immigration and Border Protection continues to investigate the matter in partnership with other jurisdictions that are relevant in this matter.”

A spokeswoman for the Medical Board of Australia, Nicole Newton, said the role of the board and AHPRA was to protect the public, but she could not comment on the allegations for fear of jeopardising the integrity of their work.

“There are currently a number of checks and balances in place before someone is registered to practice a health profession in Australia,” Newton said.

“When they apply for registration, applicants must make a declaration about their criminal history, they must provide a certificate of registration status from all overseas registration authorities where they have previously practised, and they must prove that they meet the registration standards set by national boards, including about criminal history.

“If an applicant makes a false declaration, they face likely disciplinary action.”



Next year, new requirements will come into force so that practitioners qualified overseas will have to meet the same criminal history check standards demanded of health practitioners in Australia, she said.

Proposals to change international criminal history requirements have been subject to extensive public consultation.

Do you know more? melissa.davey@theguardian.com