Forest Park hospital co-founder sentenced in $200 million Dallas-Fort Worth fraud case
An anesthesiologist and one of the founding members of the defunct Forest Park Medical Center has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for his role in a $200 million bribery scam that forced the closing of the chain of doctor-owned luxury hospitals in North Texas.
Richard Ferdinand Toussaint Jr., who is already serving a 41-month federal sentence for a separate health care fraud conviction, was sentenced to 66 months on Monday for conspiring to steer lucrative patients — particularly those with high-reimbursing, out-of-network private insurance — to the now defunct hospital by paying surgeons for referrals, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. The sentences will be served concurrently.
Toussaint, 62, of Dallas, had pleaded guilty in March 2018 to charges of conspiracy to pay health care bribes and kickbacks and illegal remuneration under the Travel Act.
On Monday along with the 66-month sentence, Toussaint was ordered to pay $82.9 million in restitution.
In federal court documents, Toussaint admitted that he teamed up with co-defendant Dr. Wade Neal Barker, a bariatric surgeon, to launch Forest Park Medical Center, a physician-owned hospital for bariatric and spinal surgery patients, in 2008.
Forest Park began in Dallas, but there were also facilities in Fort Worth and Southlake as part of the chain of hospitals. There also were facilities in Frisco and San Antonio. A hospital in Austin never opened.
The hospitals closed, but they have been purchased in recent years.
Toussaint, Barker and others invested in or worked at the medical center in a bribery scheme that concentrated on referring patients to the healthcare facility in exchange for illegal kickbacks, authorities said.
Forest Park was an out-of-network hospital that could set its own prices and receive generally greater reimbursements.
Hospital executives and physicians paid and took bribes and kickbacks for patient referrals with high-reimbursement private medical insurance, authorities said. Owners, managers and employees also sold to other facilities patients with lower-paying insurance, such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Federal agents said Toussaint, Barker and their co-conspirators shelled out about $40 million in bribes, disguised as “marketing money.”
As a result of the bribes, kickbacks and other inducements, the Dallas healthcare center billed patient insurance plans and programs well over $500 million and collected over $200 million in fraudulent claims, federal prosecutors said in court documents.
Toussaint was one of 18 convicted in the scheme.
Defendants who pleaded guilty before trials included Barker, Alan Andrew Beauchamp, Kelly Wade Loter, David Daesung Kim, Israel Ortiz, Andrea Kay Smith, Frank Gonzales Jr., Andrew Jonathan Hillman and Semyon Narosov.
Those convicted in trials included Iris Kathleen Forrest, Mrugeshkumar Shah, Shawn Mark Henry, Michael Baseem Rimlawi, Douglas Sung Won, Jackson Jacob and Wilton McPherson “Mac” Burt.
