Richard Scrushy
[1][14] At an early age, Scrushy taught himself to play the piano and guitar and was earning money doing odd jobs by the time he was twelve years old.
[17] In the late 1970s, following his time teaching at UAB and Wallace State, Scrushy was offered a position with Lifemark Corporation, a Houston, Texas-based health care company.
[3] Within a few years of being hired at Lifemark, Scrushy was part of a $100 million operation that included the pharmacy, physical rehabilitation, and hospital acquisition divisions.
[14][21] With the assistance of four partners from Amcare Inc. and a one million dollar investment by Citicorp Venture Capital, Scrushy took the quickly growing company and founded HealthSouth Corporation in 1984.
[21] The next year, HealthSouth expanded into two new fields, worker's compensation and sports medicine, allowing the company to double its earnings and obtain assets close to $100 million.
[21] Over the next decade, HealthSouth's sports medicine programs received international attention by being linked to star athletes including Bo Jackson, who served as the president of HealthSouth's Sports Medicine Council;[22] Roger Clemens;[23] Jack Nicklaus,[23] Kyle Petty;[24] Michael Jordan;[25] Shaquille O'Neal,[25] and Lúcio Carlos Cajueiro Souza.
[21] An internal auditor alleged that he was fired for drawing attention to HealthSouth's financial problems and that he was pressured to meet certain earnings targets.
[28] In March 2003, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil suit against Scrushy and HealthSouth alleging the company had falsified at least $2.7 billion worth of profit between 1996 and 2002.
[29] HealthSouth agreed to pay the United States government $325 million on December 30, 2004, in order to "settle allegations that the company defrauded Medicare and other federal healthcare programs".
[31] A criminal complaint was filed by the FBI against HealthSouth's chief financial officer, Weston Smith, and civil charges were brought against Scrushy by the SEC.
[5][35] In the indictment, Scrushy was accused of using intimidation, threats, and cash payments to coerce top HealthSouth executives into committing fraud.
[36] The group attempted to hide the false earnings by illegally inflating balances of accounts such as fixed assets and estimated insurance reimbursements.
[36] Despite multiple chief executives testifying against Scrushy, prosecutors were unable to produce any material evidence that he had been involved in the fraudulent accounting.
[36] Scrushy was interviewed by Mike Wallace for a 60 Minutes segment called "Cooking The Books",[38] began hosting a Christian television show with his wife called Viewpoint, backed a citywide 40-day prayer movement referred to as "City, thou art loosed", and joined the predominantly African-American Guiding Light Church.
[7] The indictment included 30 counts of racketeering, money laundering, extortion, obstruction of justice, and bribery of Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
[6][7] Prosecutors claimed that Scrushy had agreed to pay over $500,000 of Siegelman's debt, which he accumulated during a failed attempt to bring a state lottery to Alabama, in exchange for a seat on the Certificates of Need Review Board.
[47] Upon sentencing, Scrushy and Siegelman were taken into custody and transported to a federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia, where they briefly shared a cell.
[50] Awaiting appeal, Scrushy was briefly transported to a transfer site for inmates in Oklahoma City before being sent to his permanent location at a low-security federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.
[51] The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Scrushy's request to be released on bond, citing an earlier ruling written by U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller.
[56] On June 4, 2012, the Supreme Court rejected Scrushy's appeal, allowing his public corruption and bribery convictions to stand.
[59] While opposing counsel claimed Scrushy was a "hands-on manager who treated the company as a personal piggy bank," he continued to assign blame to his subordinates and maintain that he did nothing wrong.
