A 6-year-old girl died after being treated by Jacques Roy, but that was only the beginning, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday.

Roy got two patients hooked on prescription drugs so he could have sex with them, one of whom died in a car wreck with high levels of the drug in her system.

His botched treatment of a man who went to him for erectile dysfunction and left the patient impotent and in excruciating pain, the details of which were too explicit to mention in court.

Dallas County officials fired him as one of their jail doctors after just six months for prescribing narcotics to an inmate — a pattern of improper prescribing that led to the suspension of his medical license.

But the former Rockwall physician may be best remembered for masterminding a record $373 million home health fraud scheme against Medicare and Medicaid using fake patients — including some of Dallas' homeless — by promising them cash, food stamps and groceries.

On Wednesday, Roy, 60, was sentenced to 35 years in federal prison for multiple health care fraud counts.

Jacques Roy

"We've seen the damage he's done," Assistant U.S. Attorney P.J. Meitl told the judge in his fraud case. "There was not one redeeming quality about Dr. Roy."

Meitl asked U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay to give the Quebec native the maximum punishment of 105 years, saying he is a "devious criminal" without remorse and a "menace" who used his Hippocratic Oath "as a pickup line."

After listening to the long list of calamities Roy visited upon people and institutions, Lindsay passed down what he described as an "effective life sentence" for a man he called a danger to the public who was unlikely to reform.

"I cannot say that you were a good doctor," Lindsay said. "You have found a way to get around any restriction that was placed on you."

Lindsay had heard evidence, for example, that when Roy's ability to bill Medicare was suspended in June 2011 because of suspected fraud, he used another company to continue billing for bogus services.

Roy's defense attorneys had asked for no more than 10 years in prison, arguing that he could still contribute to society, even without a medical license.

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 had an "extensively planned exit strategy."

In his remarks to the judge prior to learning his fate, Roy said he made some decisions he regretted while trying to care for people. And he apologized to his family.

"I made some mistakes," Roy told Lindsay during the five-hour sentencing hearing. "I was wrong."

Roy, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit with chains across his torso and feet, said he can now see "the enormity of the situation."

"I ask for mercy," said Roy. "I'm looking forward to giving back to society."

But if he ever walks out of prison, Roy will be a very old man.

'Greed and ego'

Roy was convicted of 12 counts of health care fraud and obstruction during his April 2016 trial.

During Wednesday's hearing, Lindsay granted a request from Roy's attorneys to play a 10-minute video featuring some of his former patients praising him.

"There's a lot of people here who still need you," one person says in the video.

Roy's wife, Dr. Louise Lamarre, told Lindsay that Roy has "tremendous inner strength." She said he has a strong work ethic and is a "great motivator." When Roy started caring for patients at their homes, he told her he had found his calling, she said.

"All of his energy was directed to patient care," Lamarre said. "There was no intention of wrongdoing here."

W. Rick Copeland, director of the medical fraud control unit of the Office of the Texas Attorney General, stands next to a chart outlining the health care fraud scheme during a 2012 news conference in Dallas. (File Photo / The Associated Press)

Ali Fazel, one of Roy's attorneys, said Roy does not pose a threat to the public and that a long prison term would serve no purpose. Fazel said he wanted his client to leave prison one day, pay off his restitution and contribute to society.

Meitl, however, detailed Roy's troubled history, saying he was "driven solely by greed and ego."

"He used the elderly and homeless as pawns," Meitl said, using them to submit fake Medicare and Medicaid claims. "He didn't care for them. He used them."

Roy wanted to become the biggest player in home health care after his career floundered, he said.

"He wanted to prove he was the big man he thought he was," Meitl said. "Dr. Roy is anything but a good doctor. He is a menace."

Roy, who has U.S. and Canadian citizenship, stole someone's ID and put his photo on it, Meitl said.

When agents searched his home in 2011, they found a book titled Hide Your 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.

"Everything he's done in his life has suggested he is that devious criminal," Meitl said.

Making history

Roy caught the attention of federal regulators by submitting by far the most Medicare claims in the nation for home health services, a federal agent said during the trial.

The scheme began in 2004. Roy's Medistat office in DeSoto handled more home health care visits from January 2006 to November 2011 than any other physician's office in the country, federal authorities said.

Roy performed unnecessary home visits and ordered unnecessary medical services, according to trial evidence. Six others were indicted in the scheme. Four have already been sentenced to prison time. A fifth got probation.

Medistat was an association of health care providers that mostly provided home health certifications and conducted home visits for patients needing care.

Employees leave the offices of Medistat Group Associates in DeSoto in February 2012 after Dr. Jacques Roy and six associates were arrested and charged with health care fraud. (File Photo / Staff)

Roy set up a full-time forgery operation in which people were hired to sign his name on medical documents, testimony showed. And nurses falsified the documents to make it seem patients qualified for home health care services when they did not, prosecutors said.

As Meitl put it during the trial, "A doctor cannot care for 11,000 patients at once."

One of Roy's cohorts, Charity Eleda, paid recruiters $50 to walk into The Bridge homeless shelter in Dallas and promise free meals to get recruits.

Roy also paid 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," court records show.

Suspended

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.

In the mid-1990s, as the result of a malpractice case, insurers paid out about $700,000 to the family of a 6-year-old girl who died while under his care, Meitl said Wednesday.

His medical license was suspended in 2001 after it was revealed that a woman with whom he had an affair had died in a car crash. Deborah Sommers' use of hydrocodone, which Roy had illegally prescribed her, contributed to the 1999 crash, court records show.

The Texas Medical Board placed him on probation for five years.

Jacques Roy and his co-defendants

Ronald Sommers, her husband, attended Wednesday's hearing, holding an envelope with family photos that he showed the judge. While returning to his seat, he shoved a photo of his wife in front of Roy, who did not react.

Lindsay didn't allow Sommers to testify. But after the hearing, Sommers said he had wanted Roy to get the maximum punishment.

"He got off light in my opinion," Sommers said. "He's an evil man."

The 2001 suspension hurt Roy's ability to find steady and respectable work, and he performed badly in the jobs he did get, like the one in Dallas County's jails.

The county fired Roy after only six months for "poor performance," which included failing to care for an anemic patient and writing an inmate a prescription for Valium without a license to do so — a violation of his probation.

When the medical board allowed Roy in 2003 to work for a chain of clinics that treat erectile dysfunction, the first patient he saw ended up impotent after he injected a medication Roy prescribed him into his penis.

The man received a six-figure settlement.

Home health fraud defendants and sentences

Jacques Roy: 35 years in federal prison and $373,331 in restitution for conspiracy to commit health care fraud, health care fraud, false statements relating to health care matters and obstruction of justice.

Wilbert James Veasey, Jr.: 17 years in federal prison and $23 million in restitution for conspiracy to commit health care fraud and health care fraud.

Cyprian Akamnonu: 10 years in federal prison and $25 million in restitution for conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Patricia Akamnonu: 10 years in federal prison and $25 million in restitution for conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Charity Eleda: 4 years in federal prison and $397,294 in restitution for conspiracy to commit health care fraud, health care fraud and false statements for use in determining rights for benefit and payment by Medicare.

Teri Sivils: 3 years probation and $885,714 in restitution for conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Cynthia Stiger: scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 26 for conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

SOURCE: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas