|
"Publicly held companies, whether they make
turbines or tiramisu, are programmed to maximize efficiency and increase sales
every quarter - no matter what. Inevitably this leads to cutting corners." -
Daniel Gross
"The current accounting standards give those
preparing financial statements great latitude and the tremendous use of
judgement in coming up with numbers. That latitude and judgement can be used
very handily to misrepresent the information provided to investors." - Lynn
Turner, former chief accountant Securities and Exchange
Commission 09/17/07
1974 to 1976
Albert John Dunlap engineers
a massive accounting fraud at Nitec, a paper-mill company in Niagara Falls, New
York.
1996 "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap is hired to
resurrect Sunbeam.
"Chainsaw Al" arranges
a "massive financial fraud" eventually paying a $500,000 SEC fine and is
barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company.
Kenneth Lee Lay
replaces Richard Kinder as
head of Enron.
Kenneth Lee Lay
is convicted in May 2006 of conspiracy,
securities
fraud, wire fraud and making
false statements.
July 30, 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley
Act
The US Labor Department dismisses 841 cases out of 1,273
complaints filed while ruling in favor of corporate whistleblowers only 17
times thereafter.
Many of the were based "on the technicality that
workers at corporate subsidiaries aren't covered" by the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act
2004 Martin Grass, CEO of Rite Aid is
sentenced to 8 years in prison for his role in a massive accounting fraud at
the drugstore chain his father co-founded. Five other executives are also found
quilty.
2005 Adelphia CEO John J. Rigas is
convicted of bank, wire and
securities fraud
and is sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.
Timothy J. Rigas and
Michael J. Rigas, his sons, as well as Peter Venetis, his son-in-law, and
Michael Mulcahey are also charged.
They concealed $2.3 billion in
liabilities from corporate investors and the three Rigases had taken $3.1
billion in loans not recorded on the books.
Scott D. Sullivan, an
American Certified Public Accountant and the former CFO, Treasurer, and
Secretary of WorldCom, engineered WorldCom's $11-billion accounting fraud.
Scott Sullivan is sentenced to five years in prison and agrees to
testify against WorldCom Incorporated CEO Bernard J. Ebbers who received
25 years for his role in the $11-billion accounting fraud and subsequent $180
billion dollar loss to investors.
L. Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco International
Ltd. received a sentence of eight and one-third to 25 years in prison
for misappropriation of funds,
grand larceny for $150
million in unauthorized
bonuses and fraud against the company shareholders for an amount of more
than $400 million.
HealthSouth CEO
Richard M. Scrushy is formely charged with fraud,
money laundering,
conspiracy, and
making false statements in a $2.7
billion accounting fraud.
After 21 days of deliberation, he is
acquitted.
"I sat in that courtroom for six months, and I did
everything possible to advocate for his cause. Scrushy promised me a lot more
than what I got." - Audrey Lewis
Audrey Lewis received $10,000 from
Richard M. Scrushy through the Lewis Group,
a public relations
firm, and another $1,000 to help buy a computer.
2006 Enron Corporation CEO Jeffrey K. Skilling is
sentenced to 24 years and 4 months in prison for
conspiracy,
insider trading,
making false statements to auditors
and securities
fraud.
Sanjay Kumar Chairman and CEO of Computer Associates
International is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $8 million after
pleading quilty to leading a $2.2 billion accounting fraud at the software
company.
2007 Richard M. Scrushy is later
found guilty of bribery, conspiracy and
mail fraud in a conspiracy trial with co-defendent Alabama Govenor Don
Siegelman in a different case.
Richard M. Scrushy settles other charges
with the SEC over the $2.7 billion accounting fraud and agrees to pay the SEC
$81 million before settling into his new trade as a television preacher in
Birmingham, Alabama.
Walter A. Forbes, CEO of CUC International
which merged with HFC Incorporated to form Cendant, is convicted of
securities fraud
and two counts of making
false statements.
Walter A. Forbes: sentenced to 12 years 7 months;
$3.275 billion in restitution.
Joseph Nacchio, CEO of Qwest
Communications International Inc., is sentenced to 6 years in prison for
insider trading based on
knowledge of improper accounting
practices.
The stock of Qwest Communications International
Inc. plunges from $60 per share to $2 per share when accounting
irregularities came to light.
Joseph Nacchio claims his conviction was
based on his company's refusal to coöperate with
NSA requests to spy on its customers. This seems likely.
His version
of events matches reporting by USA Today in 2006, in which the paper noted that
Qwest was the lone holdout from the government's warrantless surveillance
operations and that defiance "might affect its ability to get future classified
work with the government."
Nacchio is barred from using any evidence of
potential retaliation in his defense, given that the material was considered
classified, and his judge refused requests to allow the evidence in trial.
Reports from the Washington Post on evidence
that has been made public on his case since that time seem consistent with the
CEO's claims.
2015
New Department of Labor Rule Gives Whistleblowing Employees
Greater Protections Against Retaliation (do not believe
it!)
"Ragged Dick
opened his eyes slowly, and stared stupidly in the face of the speaker, but did
not offer to get up.
"Wake up, you
young vagabond!" said the man
impatiently.
"I suppose you'd lay there all day, if I hadn't called
you."
Going out into the fresh air
Dick felt the pangs of
hunger.
The small boy stepping incautiously to the edge of the boat
fell over into the foaming water.
"My child!" a man exclaimed,"who will
save my child? A thousand - ten thousand dollars to any who will save
him!"
Now Dick, an expert swimmer, immediately dove in.
"Not many boys would have
risked their lives for a stranger," said the gentleman.
It was the
suit of new clothes he wore which made him feel a little more aristocratic.
He
accordingly went to a restaurant for a substantial supper.
He was no
longer Ragged Dick now, but Mr. Richard Hunter, junior partner in the large
firm of Rockwell & Hunter.
Mr. Greyson felt that even in
a worldly way Dick was a good match for his daughter; but he knew and
valued still more his good heart and conscientious fidelity to duty, and
excellent principles, and cheerfully gave his consent.
Last week I read
Dick's marriage in the papers, and rejoiced in his new hopes of happiness.
So Dick has achieved
Fame and
Fortune, the fame of an honorable and enterprising man of business, and a
fortune which promises to be very large.
I am glad to say Dick has not
been spoiled by prosperity.
He never forgets his
humble beginnings, and tries to
show his sense of goodness by extending a helping hand to the poor and
needy boys, whose trials and privations he understands well from his own
past experience." - Horatio Alger Jr. |
2007
Merck agrees to pay $2.3
billion to the IRS.
The tax dispute stemmed from income attributed to a
partnership set up in Bermuda in 1993 to avoid taxes.
Merck acquires
Medico and gave two patents, for Zocor® and Mevacor®, to it's Bermuda
subsidiary.
Merck then
pays it's subsidiary royalties on the two drugs - in effect deducting income it
had paid itself.
2008
Merck agrees to pay a penalty of $671 million
for overcharging the government for
four popular Medicaid
drugs and for bribing doctors to prescribe
Vioxx®,
Zocor®, Mevacor® and Pepcid®.
Investigation triggered in 2000 by
a former Merck salesman with an
itchy conscience who
blew the whistle.
Joseph Roth*, account manager for
Israel based United
Mizrahi Bank, and rabbi Moshe Zigelman*, admit
a tax evasion scheme
through bogus tax-exempt donations to organizations related to Spinka,
an Orthodox Jewish
sect.
rabbi Moshe Zigelman admitted to soliciting donations by
promising to refund 80% to 95% of the sum.
Joseph Roth admitted he
established secret overseas bank accounts and bogus loans to facilitate the
transfer of funds and charged fees to repatriate the money.
"Many national healthcare plans provide universal
insurance at a lower per-capita cost than the American system with better
results." - JD Hunley
"A jury might think $45 million is fair and just
compensation to the family of the woman who died while hospital personnel
ignored her cries of pain.
The judge will automatically reduce any
possible verdict to $250,000 - the most in non-economic damages anyone can
recover for any injury or death caused by a healthcare provider.
The
cap was passed at the behest of the insurance industry and medical
establishment more than three decades ago.
It has never been changed or
adjusted - even for inflation.
We may be reaching a point at which
letting patients die is more cost-effective than treating them." - Linda
Fermoyle Rice 1980s Under the
Reagan administration International Medical Centers run by George
Recarey expand rapidly due to a special exemption granted through the office of
Jeb Bush.
1987 A federal court jury finds Jorge
Recarey, Mariano Villa Del Rey and Antonio Fernandez Sr. guilty of labor
racketeering charges.
HMO Official Charged with Bribery
July 1994 National Medical
Enterprises agreed to pay $379 million in criminal fines, civil damages,
and penalties for kickbacks
and fraud at National Medical Enterprises
psychiatric and
substance abuse hospitals in more than 30 states.
After this
settlement, National Medical Enterprises renames itself
"Tenet".
October 1996 First American Health
Care of Georgia, Inc, later Integrated Health Services, Inc, agrees
to reimburse the
federal government $255 million for overbilling and making fraudulent
Medicare claims.
First American billed Medicare for costs
unrelated to the care of patients in their homes, including the personal
expenses of senior management, as well as marketing and lobbying expenses.
Epilogue: IHS files for
bankruptcy and never pays
the settlement.
November 1996 Laboratory
Corporation of America Holdings (LabCorp), agrees to pay $182 million to
resolve charges that it submitted false claims for medically unnecessary
laboratory tests to federal and state
health care programs.
The fraud involved bundled lab tests that were billed to Medicare as
free-standing tests, resulting in an eight-fold increase in charges to
Medicare.
March 1997 SmithKline Beecham
Clinical Laboratories Inc. (SBCL), now GlaxoSmith Kline, is ordered to pay
$325 million for filing false
claims involving adding on laboratory tests not requested by doctors and
not medically necessary, billing for lab tests that were not actually
performed, giving kickbacks to doctors in
order to get business, and billing Medicare for dialysis testing already
paid for by kidney dialysis centers.
July 1998
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois (also known as Health Care Service
Corporation) pleeds guilty to eight felony counts and agrees to pay $144
million.
The nature of the fraud is that Blue Cross Blue Shield
Illinois manipulated work samples and falsified reports to the Health
Care Finance Administration in order
to conceal evidence of
its poor performance as a federally contracted processor of Medicare
claims.
January 2000
Fresenius Medical Care of North America, the world's largest provider of
kidney dialysis products and services, agreed to pay a fine of $486 million for
a scam involving National Medical Care, Inc. (NMC), a
kidney dialysis
subsidiary owned by Fresenius which included fraudulent and fictitious
blood testing claims by LifeChem, Inc. and fraudulent claims submitted
to Medicare for intradialytic parenteral nutrition (IDPN), a nutritional
therapy provided to patients during dialysis treatments.
February 2000 Beverly Enterprises Inc., the nation's
largest assisted living facility chain, agreed to pay $175 million to resolve
civil and criminal charges that it defrauded Medicare by fabricating Medicare
patient records.
December
2000 HCA The Healthcare Company (formerly known as Columbia
HCA), the largest for-profit hospital
chain in the US, pleeds guilty to criminal conduct and agrees to pay more
than $840 million in criminal fines, civil penalties and damages for unlawful
billing practices.
Fraud included: billing for lab tests not medically
necessary and not ordered by physicians, "upcoding" medical problems in order
to get higher reimbursements for more serious medical issues, billing the
government for advertising under the guise of "community education," and
billing the government for non-reimbursable costs incurred in the purchase of
health agencies around the country.
This agreement does not resolve
allegations that HCA unlawfully charged for the
costs of running its hospitals, and that it paid kickbacks to physicians to get
Medicare and Medicaid patients referred to its facilities.
March 2001 Vencor Inc., one of the nation's largest
assisted living facility chains, and Ventas Inc., a related real estate
investment trust, agreed to pay the US $104.5 million to resolve claims for
failure to provide the promised quality of care to assisted living facility
patients due to inadequate staffing,
improper care of bedsores, and failure to meet resident's basic dietary
needs.
October 2001 Taketa-Abbott
Pharmaceutical Products Inc. agreed to pay $875 million to resolve criminal
charges and civil liabilities in connection with fraudulent drug pricing and
marketing of Lupron®, a drug sold for $500 per dose for the treatment of
prostate cancer under
Medicare Part-A.
2002 Pfizer paid $49 million to settle state and
federal Medicaid fraud charges involving Lipitor®.
April 2003 Bayer paid $257,200,000 to
settle Medicaid fraud charges involving a "lick and stick" scheme in which
Bayer sold re-labeled
products to an HMO at deeply discounted prices and then concealed this discount
in order to avoid rebating the government .
June
2003 AstraZeneca agreed to pay
$355,000,000 for providing free drug samples to doctors and telling them to
bill Medicare and Medicaid hundreds of dollars per sample.
HCA
agreed to pay $631 million in civil penalties and damages arising from
false claims, including cost report
fraud and the payment of
kickbacks to physicians, submitted to Medicare and other federal health
programs.
July 2003 CG Nutritionals, Inc.
pled guilty to obstructing a criminal investigation and defrauding the Medicare
and Medicaid programs and agreed to pay $400 million to resolve civil claims.
The subsidiary of Abbott Labs, CG Nutritionals, Inc.,
agreed to a criminal fine of $200 million in relation to the sale of products
which pump special foods into the stomachs and digestive systems of patients
who are not able to ingest meals in a normal manner.
2003 GlaxoSmithKline signs
a corporate integrity
agreement and pays $88 million in a fine for overcharging
Medicaid for the
antidepressant, Paxil®
and nasal
allergy spray, Flonase®. |
|
 |
This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational purposes only.
This website defines a
new perspective with which to engage reality to which its author adheres. The
author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has
forged a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has
been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their
agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race.
Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious
practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This
web site marks the founding of a system of philosophy named The Truth of the
Way of the Lumière Infinie - a rational gnostic mystery religion based
on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme
leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is
encouraged to develop a personal relation with the Creator and Sustainer
through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the
spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of the
Truth of the Way of the Lumière Infinie are spelled out in detail on
this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their
religious beliefs in America is considered a "hate crime."
This web site
in no way condones violence. To the contrary the intent here is to reduce the
violence that is already occurring due to the international corporate cartels
desire to control the human race. The international corporate cartel already
controls the world economic system, corporate media worldwide, the global
industrial military entertainment complex and is responsible for the collapse
of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of
global ecosystems. Civilization is based on coöperation. Coöperation
does not occur at the point of
a gun.
American social mores and values have declined precipitously
over the last century as the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and
more power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general
through corporate media by pressing emotional buttons which have been
preprogrammed into the population through prior corporate media psychological
operations. The results have been the destruction of the family and the
destruction of social structures that do not adhere to the corrupt
international elites vision of a perfect world. Through distraction and
coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population has been
directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite that
further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.
All
views and opinions presented on this web site are the views and opinions of
individual human men and women that, through their writings, showed the
capacity for intelligent, reasonable, rational, insightful and unpopular
thought. All factual information presented on this web site is believed to be
true and accurate and is presented as originally presented in print media which
may or may not have originally presented the facts truthfully.
Opinion and thoughts
have been adapted, edited, corrected, redacted, combined, added to, re-edited
and re-corrected as nearly all opinion and thought has been throughout time but
has been done so in the spirit of the original writer with the intent of making
his or her thoughts and opinions clearer and relevant to the reader in the
present time.
Fair Use Notice
This site may contain
copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically
authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our
efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, human rights, political,
economic, democratic, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe
this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for
in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those
who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
research and educational purposes. For more information see:
www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted
material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
 Copyright
© Lawrence Turner
All Rights Reserved
|