Justice Department officials announced that Dr. Jacques Roy was arrested in Texas and faces life in prison as well as fines of more than $250,000 if convicted.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Doctor Roy and his assistant, who was also charged, sent “recruiters” door-to-door in the Dallas area to get people to sign bogus medical forms that were then used in the alleged scam. The pair even went as far as to pay homeless people $50 each to sign the forms, according to the DOJ accusations.

Top Justice Department officials, working for several years to stem a rampant rise in healthcare fraud around the country, also revealed Tuesday that 78 home health agencies that were working with the physician, Dr. Jacques Roy, will be suspended from the Medicare program for up to 18 months.

FBI agents in Texas arrested Roy, of Rockwall, Texas, a physician for 28 years, and asked a federal judge in Dallas to keep him in custody until trial, citing his vast “bank accounts, a sailboat, vehicles and multiple pieces of property” as indications he may attempt to flee.

Facing life in prison and a $250,000 fine, as well as restitution of the vast sum of money he allegedly cost the federal government, Roy is to appear in court in Dallas later Tuesday.

Under the alleged fraud scheme, the doctor and his office manager in DeSoto, Texas, Teri Sivils, who was also charged, allegedly sent healthcare “recruiters” door-to-door asking residents to sign forms that contained the doctor’s electronic signature and stated that he had seen the residents professionally for medical services he never provided.

They also allegedly dispatched more “recruiters” to a homeless shelter in Dallas, paying $50 to every street person they coaxed from a nearby parking lot and signed him up on the bogus forms.

The long-running ruse allegedly began in 2006 and over five years collected more Medicare beneficiaries than any other medical practice in the United States.

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., in testimony Tuesday before a House appropriations subcommittee, said the Department of Justice is making healthcare fraud a centerpiece of its enforcement efforts. He said that in the last fiscal year alone, they had recovered nearly $4.1 billion in funds “that were stolen or taken improperly from federal healthcare programs.”

http://www.latimes.com/...