The Attorney General of Texas Ken Paxton sent out a press release Thursday that a Travis County judge had issued a summary judgment ordering Dr. Richard Malouf of Dallas to pay Texas back some $12 million for Medicaid fraud.
Allegations started back in 2011 about Medicaid orthodontia
If you will remember back, Dr. Malouf was accused of millions of dollars of Medicaid orthodontic fraud back in 2011, along with lots of other dentists in the great Medicaid/Xerox orthodontia debacle, about which TDMR has reported on extensively. Malouf received the most media attention as the allegations caught him building one of the largest, most expensive residences in Dallas after he had sold his practice to a private equity firm. He gained further notoriety for suing the media and his neighbor, the mom of actors Luke and Owen Wilson, after she allowed media on her property to film Malouf's mansion in progress. You know, the one with the world-class waterpark which he sold last December for an undisclosed amount.
Malouf underwent criminal and civil investigations, but things went dark around 2015, until today.
Judgment not based on Medicaid orthodontic allegations
Now you might think that this judgment had to do with false HLD scoring and matters having to do with Medicaid orthodontia.
Well, that's not the case. Malouf had "fraudulently billed Medicaid for services that were actually provided by a different doctor" some 1,842 times, even while he was on vacation.
The actual amount of the fraud was $538,228.45 per the judgment. With TMFPA penalties, Texas winds up with a tidy sum of around $12 million that they will have to share with the whistleblowers, Dr. Christine Ellis et al and her lawyers. They get 14-25%.
No issues of material fact, no need for a trial
This summary judgment means that the OAG convinced the judge that no genuine issues of material fact existed, and that it was entitled to judgment as a matter of law. So there was no need for a trial. Only took nine years.