Keep missing the BIG EXEC who was missing......JAMES HAPP....ex HCA Employee

Former health care execs convicted of conspiracy
Defendents could face minimum of 20 years in prison, maximum of 30
By: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Issue date: 3/14/08 Section: Nation
PrintEmail Article Tools Page 1 of 2 next > COLUMBUS, Ohio - A federal jury yesterday convicted five former executives of a health care company in a $1.9 billion fraud scheme. The officials worked with National Century Financial Enterprises, described as the nation's largest health care financing firm before its 2002 bankruptcy.

The five - some of the company's highest ranking executives - were convicted of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud.

The defendants and their attorneys listened without emotion as U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley read the verdicts one by one. Some of the defendants' family members sitting in the courtroom appeared stunned.

Those convicted were: Donald Ayers, the company's former chief operating officer; James Dierker, the company's former vice president of client development; Roger Faulkenberry, a former executive vice president who raised money from investors; Rebecca Parrett, the company's former vice chairman; and Randy Speer, National Century's former chief financial officer.

The defendants face a minimum of 20 years in prison, and prison terms could go as high as 30 years behind bars depending on the number of counts they were convicted of.

Judge Marbley, over the objections of government prosecutors, allowed the defendants to remain free while they await sentencing but required them all to wear an electronic monitoring device. Sentencing was expected in two to three months.

The company offered financing to small hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers by purchasing their debt - also known as accounts receivable - and giving them cash to cover expenses.

Prosecutors argued executives of the company, based in suburban Dublin, authorized millions in unsecured loans to those health care providers, then misled investors about the loans.

Attorneys for the five defendants said prosecutors took the company's activities out of context by showing jurors only a tiny slice of National Century's operations.
The government said the unsecured loans caused shortfalls that the executives covered up by moving money between accounts. The government alleged the executives fabricated data and lied to investors about the shortfalls and loaded false information on a company computer system.

"If they did nothing wrong, then why did they have to lie and cheat and cover it up month after month, year after year?" federal trial attorney Kathleen McGovern said to jurors.

The government's star witness, former executive vice president Sherry Gibson, testified last month that the company kept two sets of books, one for public consumption filled with false information, the other that showed the firm's actual shortfalls. Gibson is one of four former National Century executives who previously pleaded guilty to fraud charges and have cooperated with the government.

Over a day and a half of closing arguments, defense attorneys attacked the government's case on the grounds that the evidence was thin and the witnesses unreliable.

"The deeper we look at this, the more flimsy the government's case becomes," Leonard Yelsky, who represented Dierker, told jurors.

Missing from the trial has been National Century's former president and chief executive, Lance Poulsen, a chief target of the government's allegations.

Before his own trial on the fraud charges in August, Poulsen is scheduled for a trial Monday before Marbley on charges of witness tampering.