Earlier this week, Highland Park anesthesiologist Richard Ferdinand Toussaint Jr. was ordered to pay $82.9 million in restitution and sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison for his role in the $200 million Forest Park Medical Center fraud case, according to federal prosecutors.
Toussaint was sentenced on Monday, but is currently serving a 41-month federal prison sentence for his involvement in the case, pleading guilty in March 2018 to a separate health care fraud conviction for one count of conspiracy to pay health care bribes and kickbacks and one count of illegal remuneration under the Travel Act.
Toussaint opened Forest Park Medical Center, a physician-owned hospital for bariatric and spinal surgery, in 2008 with co-defendant and bariatric surgeon, Dr. Wade Neal Barker. Toussaint admitted to collaborating with Barker, hospital manager Alan Andrew Beauchamp and others to lure patients with high-reimbursing, out-of-network private insurance to the hospital by paying surgeons for referrals. Toussaint was one of 18 doctors convicted, including three Preston Hollow physicians: Andrew Jonathan Hillman, Semyon Narosov and Michael Bassem Rimlawi.
