This matter is before the Court on the Report and Recommendation of the Review Panel that Respondent George D. Houser State Bar No. 369225 be disbarred for violating Rule 8.4 a 2 of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct, see Bar Rule 4-102 d, based on his convictions in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on one felony count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, eight felony counts of payroll tax fraud, and two counts of failure to file income taxes. As a result of his convictions, Houser was sentenced to 240 months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay nearly $7 million in restitution to Medicare and Medicaid and more than $870,000 to the Internal Revenue Service. This Court suspended Houser pending the outcome of his appeal from the convictions. See In the Matter of Houser, 292 Ga. 342 737 SE2d 692 2013. On June 19, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed Houser’s convictions, see United States v. Houser, 754 F.3d 1335 11th Cir. 2014, and Houser’s subsequent motion for reconsideration was unsuccessful.
On December 17, 2015, the special master, Thomas L. Holder, held a hearing pursuant to Bar Rule 4-106 f 1 to determine whether Houser should be disbarred. At that hearing, Houser, who has been a member of the Bar since 1976, asserted that his appeal was not final because he intended to file a petition in the Eleventh Circuit to recall the mandate, but he apparently never did so. On February 9, 2016, the special master issued his report finding that Houser’s appeals had terminated in 2014 and summarizing that Houser’s felony convictions arose from his operation of three nursing homes, that Houser conspired with his wife to defraud Medicare and Georgia Medicaid programs, that he obtained Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement by materially false and fraudulent pretenses, and that he siphoned money from the facilities to support his lavish lifestyle while leaving the nursing home residents without health care and living in squalor. Moreover, Houser collected payroll taxes from his employees, but failed to transmit the taxes to the Internal Revenue Service and failed to file his personal income tax returns. The special master found that in the course of committing these crimes, Houser displayed a shocking degree of dishonesty, greed, and indifference to human suffering.
