The Dr. Jacques Roy Legal Case – A Firsthand Account of Gross Government Overreach and Prosecutorial Manipulation
I. Background & House Call Practice
In 2011, the newly formed Medicare Task Force in Dallas initiated a DME (Durable Medical Equipment) fraud investigation that led to a coordinated raid of my home and medical practice, Medistat, in June 2011. This marked a departure from prior FBI investigations, which had relied on office audits and concluded that certain wheelchair orders were fraudulent and not associated with my practice. During the raid, OIG Agent Miranda Bennett interviewed me. I cooperated fully, explained the situation, and identified the fraudulent orders as the result of forgery by a former CFO I had terminated over a year prior. While this resolved the DME issue quickly, the government had already committed significant resources to the raid and had seized over 22,000 patient records. Rather than disengage, they pivoted to scrutinizing my house-call practice.
Investigators raised concerns over whether patients met Medicare's “Confined to the Home” requirement. The term “homebound” was misinterpreted by the agents as meaning “unable to leave the home,” rather than the actual regulatory definition, which includes individuals requiring a taxing effort to leave home or the use of mobility aids. However, the rule allowed patients to leave home to go to daycare or to a doctor’s office. All the patients interviewed did, in fact, qualify under the rule, using canes, walkers, or wheelchairs—criteria explicitly stated in the Medicare guidelines.
Despite realizing their interpretation of “homebound” was flawed, the prosecution proceeded without expert testimony to clarify the rule. They blocked the defense’s expert, Dr. Bayne, and instead relied on physicians unfamiliar with home health regulations, leading the jury to equate office visits with disqualification from homebound status. The government’s slogan—“If the patient can come to my office, he is not homebound”—misled the jury and contradicted Medicare’s own guidelines. Each patient in question either testified to using a mobility aid or physically appeared in court using one, meeting the regulatory standard for homebound status.
II. Charges & Allegations
To justify the high-profile raid and media narrative, the prosecution claimed a $375 million fraud loss—an unprecedented figure. Achieving this total required categorizing all services connected to my practice as fraudulent, including those provided to bedridden or ventilator-dependent patients. This blanket characterization disregarded individual patient qualifications and exaggerated the scope of the case.
A core strategy was to claim patients had been recruited improperly. However, the defense demonstrated that marketing practices used by Apple HHA were legal under Medicare rules, provided no inducements were offered. No witness testified that patients were paid to enroll. Yet the prosecution, relying on paragraph 47 of the indictment, alleged that I had informed my business manager that marketers offered cash and groceries to patients. This statement was demonstrably false—Apple HHA didn’t exist at the time the conversation allegedly occurred, and I had no knowledge of Veasey’s involvement until long after.
The prosecution also used incentivized testimony from a former employee, Jim Aston, who had misappropriated funds from my business. He was granted immunity and testified in exchange for avoiding consequences for his own misconduct. This approach—assigning false statements to me and then using cooperating witnesses to corroborate them—was a recurring tactic throughout the case.
Even isolated acts of charity, such as Apple providing food to diabetic patients already receiving services, were portrayed as illegal recruiting. These gestures were humanitarian in nature, not inducements for enrollment, yet were repurposed by the prosecution to support their narrative.
III. Witness Misconduct & False Testimony
The government relied heavily on testimony from former employees, including Teri Sivils, a former manager demoted for poor performance. Unknown to me at the time, Sivils had engaged in fraudulent activity by approving certifications I had rejected. After leaving Medistat, she started her own house-call practice and provided false testimony that mischaracterized my legitimate operations as her own fraudulent practices. Despite her credibility issues—acknowledged by prosecutors themselves—Sivils was ultimately indicted to compel cooperation and used as a witness against me.
To explain the forged signatures, the prosecution relied on testimony from Cy Akamnonu who had pled guilty for Medicare fraud and falsely testified for the prosecution I had attended meetings at his office, showing the jury multiple sign-in sheets with a signature completely different than my signature with the intent to associate me with that forgery which was used for Count 6 and Count 7 certifications. Two individuals who attended those meetings, including Patricia Akamnonu, wife of Cy Akamnnonu, confirmed to the FBI I had not attended those meetings but the exculpatory evidence was excluded from the trial. Despite early interviews omitting my involvement, Akamnonu's narrative shifted once he received a cooperation deal. When Patricia told the agents I had not assisted at those meetings and refused to testify falsely, she was transferred to a more punitive facility and her testimony was excluded from trial.
IV. Fabricated Evidence
The prosecution constructed its case through what can only be described as reality manipulation. Sign-in sheets with forged signatures were presented as evidence of my presence at Ultimate HHA meetings I never attended. The key witness—Cy Akamnonu—had never previously mentioned my involvement but testified otherwise after securing a reduced sentence through cooperation.
The case hinged not on evidence but on perception. The prosecution’s claim that I was the only physician certifying patients as homebound was knowingly false. Multiple providers had certified those same patients, but this fact was withheld from the jury.
Further complicating matters, I received no illegal compensation. Payments I received from certain HHAs were either standard medical director fees or repayments on a personal loan I made to help launch Apple HHA. That loan was interest-free, clearly documented, and repaid in full—yet prosecutors mischaracterized it as a profit-sharing arrangement. Each repayment was labeled as such and tracked in a ledger. No part of the agreement involved patient referrals. Nonetheless, the prosecution presented it as evidence of kickbacks, even though the actual service agreement explicitly prohibited such arrangements.
Efforts to recover funds stolen from me by another former associate, Jim Aston, were also twisted into evidence of alleged conspiracy. Recordings of my demands for repayment were reinterpreted by the prosecution as attempts to invest in fraudulent activity—despite zero reference to Apple HHA in those calls.
V. Count 7 Systemic Failures
Despite overwhelming exculpatory evidence, the prosecution remained focused on reinforcing their narrative, not pursuing the truth. The government’s entire case against me for Count 7—centered on patient certifications from 2007 and 2008—fell apart under basic scrutiny:
1. No provider evaluations existed in my office for any of those certifications, which was a strict internal requirement at Medistat.
2. The 485 forms used for billing bore a forged “JROY” signature not found on any other legitimate documents from my practice.
3. One certification was signed by Teri Sivils, who admitted under oath she processed certifications without physician oversight and accepted illegal payments from Ultimate HHA.
Further, Ultimate billed Medicare and was paid for services it didn’t even deliver—in some cases with no nursing notes, no physician evaluations, and in at least three instances, not even a 485 form at all. Contrary to the prosecution’s claims, Medicare does not require the 485 form for payment, and its absence doesn’t trigger rejection. Instead, HHAs submit electronic billing requests without real-time validation, making the system vulnerable to forgery and exploitation.
The prosecution’s insistence that I was central to the fraud contradicted all material evidence. If I had been involved, there would not have been unsigned, incomplete, or forged documents; legitimate signatures and documentation would have existed. Instead, the irregularities proved my non-involvement.
To justify their inflated $375 million figure, the government treated every service provided by my practice—and by the 568 home health agencies I worked with—as fraudulent. Yet only ten services were ever individually challenged, resulting in eight wrongful convictions based on false information. I was acquitted on Count 6 and Count 5 was dismissed entirely. In truth, the fraud tied to Ultimate HHA and their documented misconduct amounted to less than $40 million. To justify the media narrative and legal outcome, prosecutors constructed a broader indictment through association and exaggeration.
VI. Sentencing & Broader Implications
The clearest evidence of fabricated scale lies in the government’s claim that my practice performed over 11,000 patient certifications. In truth, the actual count—according to our billing software—was approximately 9,600. The difference represents over 1,400 certifications that I was not involved with, suggesting that HHAs independently billed services using my name without authorization.
As demonstrated in Count 7, reactivating former patients without physicians involvement appears to have been widespread and could represent a greater loss than the over 1,400 I had never seen. Still, the government never explored these leads, choosing instead to attribute all misconduct to me. The possibility that Sivils was conducting similar fraud for other HHAs was never investigated in addition to other HHAs independent of her influence also likely billing for patients not seen.
The prosecution also misrepresented accounting data, citing "Christmas Day billing" as suspicious while ignoring internal evidence that Sivils, former manager, was billing offsite at her sister's house on Christmas day every year to avoid being discovered by the office. Additionally, the prosecution's forensic accountant categorized business expenses as profit, inflating my financial benefit and painting a false picture of motive.
Ultimately, my office's direct services accounted for just 7% of the loss amount claimed by the prosecution. The remaining 93%—what the government called "intended loss"—consisted of services billed by HHAs, most of which were never proven to be fraudulent. In fact, 82 HHAs that were initially suspended were later cleared and allowed to resume operations, yet their billing was used to calculate the loss against me.
Despite all of this, I received a 35-year sentence—effectively a life sentence at age 60—while the individuals who orchestrated and admitted to the fraud received minimal penalties. The government’s portrayal of the case as a landmark Medicare fraud prosecution masks what it truly was: a deeply flawed investigation built on forgery, misinterpretation of regulations, suppressed exculpatory evidence, and selective prosecution.
Postscript
While incarcerated, I have continued advocating for truth and uncovering inconsistencies in the case. What was labeled as a complex Medicare fraud was in fact a straightforward instance of forgery and billing abuse—by others—permitted by a vulnerable payment system. My conviction was not the result of a fair legal process, but a calculated effort to protect a narrative. Not a case of judicial error, but judicial fraud.