...HealthSouth………………………………………………... 8 c.) Following Directions for Failure……………………………………........ 9 d.) Faking corporate profits………………………………………………… 10 C.) The Impact on Stakeholders…………………………………………………………….. 10 3.) Employees and Executives……………………………………………………... 10 e.) Many Lost Jobs as a result……………………………………………… 10 f.) Top Level Management Complacency.………………………………… 11 4.) Investors and HealthSouth Stock……………………………………………….. 11 5.) HealthSouth Patients and Customers….………………………………………... 11 D.) Outcome and Fairness of Punishment…………………………………………………... 12 6.) 2003 SEC Civil Law Suit against HealthSouth………………………………… 12 g.) Charges of Fraud………………………………………………………... 12 h.) Inflated Earnings on Financial Statements ...…………………………... 13 7.) Punishment: Does it fit the crime? ...................................................................... 13 i.) CEO Richard Marin Scrushy’s sentence...……..………………………. 14 j.) Other HealthSouth executives sentence ………………………......... 14-15 E.) Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………….. 15-16 INTRODUCTION There have been many examples of CEO’s misdeeds in recent history but the most interesting of them is former HealthSouth CEO Richard Marin Scrushy. Scrushy was a charismatic leader who could get his employees to follow him...
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...expanded rapidly through mergers and acquisitions. By 1992 the company had $400 Million in annual revenues and by the end of 1999 the company’s annual revenues exceed $1 Billion and it had expanded to 118 inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, 5 medical centers, 1,379 outpatient rehabilitation centers, 230 surgery centers, 129 diagnostic centers and 124 occupational medicine centers.2 HealthSouth has always participated actively in the Medicare program and they’ve received Medicare reimbursements since the eighties and nineties, to extent that over 40% of their revenues came from the Medicare program and beneficiaries in that time period, and in their more recent filings this percentage has increased to a whopping 70% in 2010.3-4 HealthSouth’s stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol HLS, with a December 9, 2011 closing price of $16.94, a market capitalization of roughly $1.61 Billion. In 2010 their revenues were $1.99 Billion and their Net Income $899 Million.5 From 1996 to 2002 CEO Richard M. Scrushy received approximately $267 million in compensation from HealthSouth, including more than $7.5 million in base salary, more than $53 million in bonuses, and stock options valued at more than $206 million when exercised. He also received valuable benefits including company loans, and the use of automobiles, aircraft, and other HealthSouth assets.6 THE SALE The...
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...later indicted in November 4, 2003. Richard Scrushy became the first CEO of any Fortune 500 company to be tried under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 for any accounting fraud. During court proceedings other practices involving HealthSouth were uncovered. Things such as unethical behavior and corporate governance involving the Board of Directors (banks and creditors were suspected to be involved but were not indicted, only civil suits). Richard Scrushy was charged with money laundering, conspiracy, securities fraud, overstating HealthSouth's earnings, and 81 more counts. "The Commission's complaint, which was filed in the federal district court in Birmingham, Ala., alleged that since 1999, at the insistence of Scrushy, HealthSouth systematically overstated its earnings by at least $1.4 billion dollars. This was because they needed to meet or exceed Wall Street earning expectations" (n/a, 2013). Prosecutors believed that Scrushy intentionally allowed his financers and accountants to commit this fraud in order to control HealthSouth's company stock. Because of the fraud, personal assets for both him and the other founding CEO's of the HealthSouth increased profusely. By the end of 2003, the 15 executive finance and accounting members that were also indicted with Scrushy, pleaded guilty to fraud for a reduced sentence. Each member implicated...
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...HealthSouth: The Scrushy Way Vonetta M. Henderson Northcentral University Introduction The Enron and Tyco scandals brought visibility to corporate scandals. The magnitude of these scandals resulted in the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act in 2002. Richard M. Scrushy and HealthSouth Corporation were the first CEO and company to be indicted under the SOX Act. HealthSouth was charged with filing false financial statements with the SEC to hid poor financial conditions from Wall Street. An audit conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that HealthSouth overstated its cumulative earnings between $3.8 billion to $4.6 billion (Weld, Bergevin, & Magrath, 2004). Although Scrushy was charged with 85 counts, he pled not-guilty, claiming that he was unaware of the fraudulent activities that had occurred. Scrushy was later exonerated as the investigation into the company found no evidence that Scrushy orchestrated or participated in any financial wrongdoings. Five financial executives and 10 other company officials pled guilty to a variety of charges. Background Richard M. Scrushy founded Amcare, Inc. in 1984. The company opened its first facility in Little Rock, Arkansas and one year later opened a facility in Birmingham and changed its name to HealthSouth Rehabilitation Corporation (HRC). In 1986, HRC went public with its initial public offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ stock exchange (HealthSouth Corporation, 2010). In 1988, HRC moved to...
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...Characteristics of Unethical CEOs……………………………………………………… 6 Was Richard Scrushy narcissistic?.……………………………………………………. 7 Impact on Stakeholders………………………………………………………………… 8 Outcome and Fairness of Punishment…………………………………………………. 9 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………... 10 References……………………………………………………………………………… 12 HEALTHSOUTH: THE SCRUSHY WAY 3 Introduction For at least 20 years, HealthSouth represented a new concept in health care. Its founder, Richard Scrushy was the embodiment of the American dream. His rise was meteoric, yet ultimately the empire he created collapsed due to fraud of his creation. Richard Scrushy Represented the American Dream Richard Scrushy came from humble beginnings. He was born in Selma, Alabama, dropped out of high school, married, and fathered two children. He worked in manual labor jobs, even managing a gas station, until he enrolled in the University of Alabama and completed a degree in respiratory technology (Solomon, Carrns & Terhune, 2003, March 20). After he worked as a respiratory technician for several years he began a company of...
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...------------------------------------------------------------------------------5 & 6 The role of Auditors at HealthSouth ---------------------------------------- 7 & 8 SEC Investigation ----------------------------------------------------------------------------9&10 Impact on Stakeholders ---------------------------------------11, 12, 13 & 14 Outcome and Fairness In Punishment ---------------------------------------- 15, 16 & 17 Conclusion -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------18 References-------------------------------------------------------------------------------19, 20 & 21 ABSTRACT This paper will investigate the financial reporting scandals of the past decade at HealthSouth and the resulting U.S. legislative attempts to impose ethical behavior and control the incidence of new reporting problems via Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. This paper begins with a brief historical perspective followed by assertions of...
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...HealthSouth: Fraud, Greed & Corporate Governance Marilyn J. Bordeaux HCS 5339 Rachael Kehoe HealthSouth: Fraud, Greed & Corporate Governance During the 1990s, Richard M. Scrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth Corporation, engineered many acquisitions of rehabilitation clinics, outpatient surgical care operators, nursing homes and other health care companies. In 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused the company and Scrushy of inflating earnings to the tune of $1.4 billion since 1999. In November 2003, a federal grand jury indicted Scrushy on 85 counts including conspiracy, securities fraud, money laundering and charges related to overstating HealthSouth’s earnings by nearly $3.0 billion. According to federal investigators, the company overstated earnings to meet analysts’ earning estimates, while hiding the accounting fraud from the auditors. However, questions were raised whether the auditors failed to find or simply overlooked the fraud at HealthSouth. Central to the investigation was the issue of what role Scrushy played in “cooking the books.” However, as the case unfolded, it highlighted many other issues such as: The role of Board of Directors in corporate governance; the role of the auditors; the effect of conflict of interest between an accounting firm and its consulting arm on auditing; whether the relationship between an investment bank and a company affects the quality of the bank’s research reports on the company; whether the executive...
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...Health South: The Scrushy Way It is a cliché that “crime does not pay.” Seemingly when one has the charisma to lead a multi-billion dollar corporation, and power to affect the well-being of thousands, perhaps crime does pay – in the short term. It’s easy to rationalize that what one does is not a crime “if it hurts no one,” or if one is doing amazing amounts of charity work. Richard M. Scrushy is a case in point – he seemed to have it all, the all-American success story, yet dishonesty, and unethical practices, when engaged in hurt everyone – for a long time. As this author has explored through this Business Ethics class, unethical behavior looks only at the short-term, what can one get now? The Carpenter taught, regarding those who did not follow wisdom, that they were “like unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it” (Matthew 7:26-27, King James Version). The character of the individual who cheats, or takes advantage of others, gets bent out of shape and distorted, until it is no longer strong enough to provide a sure foundation, and without that they fall and they hurt themselves and those around them. Impact on Stakeholders In the house that Scrushy built, this author identifies several stakeholders impacted by the dishonesty, including: Richard Scrushy, his management team, his board of directors, his employees, the patients...
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...HealthSouth Corporation: Fraud, Greed and Corporate Governance Manmohan D. Chaubey, Ph.D. The Pennsylvania State University One College Place Du Bois, PA 15801 (USA) Tel: 814-375-4846 Fax: 814-375-4784 Email: mdc13@psu.edu Case for ICMC2006 International Conference on Management Cases 4-5 December 2006 IMT Ghaziabad, India HealthSouth Corporation: Fraud, Greed and Corporate Governance During the 1990s, Richard M. Scrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth Corporation, engineered many acquisitions of rehabilitation clinics, outpatient surgical care operators, nursing homes and other health care companies. In 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused the company and Scrushy of inflating earnings to the tune of $1.4 billion since 1999. In November 2003, a federal grand jury indicted Scrushy on 85 counts including conspiracy, securities fraud, money laundering and charges related to overstating HealthSouth’s earnings by nearly $3.0 billion. According to federal investigators, the company overstated earnings to meet analysts’ earning estimates, while hiding the accounting fraud from the auditors. However, questions were raised whether the auditors failed to find or simply overlooked the fraud at HealthSouth. Central to the investigation was the issue of what role Scrushy played in “cooking the books.” However, as the case unfolded, it highlighted many other issues such as: The role of Board of Directors in corporate governance; the role of the auditors; the...
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...his GED to become one of the most successful executives in the United States. Scrushy did so by subsequently getting his respiratory therapist certification and opening his own rehabilitation center, an all-in-one medical facility that led many to copy his idea. Scrushy founded HealthSouth in 1996 using $1 million in seed capital and turned it into a hugely successful medical services empire worth over $4 billion at its prime (Haddad, Weintraub, & Grow, 2003). HealthSouth had become the largest provider of outpatient surgery, rehabilitation, and diagnostic and imaging services as well as the third largest publicly held company in Alabama (Chaubey, 2006). Scrushy is best known, however, for his deplorable lack of ethics and the massive fraud he perpetrated during his tenure with HealthSouth. Government Subsidies Scrushy mistakenly assumed that generous...
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...The Fraud Triangle 9/22/2012 Allison Walton | The Fraud Triangle The fraud triangle are conditions for fraud arising from fraudulent financial reporting and misappropriation of assets. These conditions are: a. Incentive/Pressure b. Opportunities c. Attitude/Rationalization The fraud triangle is depicted by the following image: Incentive/Pressure Management or other employees will have incentives or circumstances of pressure to commit fraud. If the decision is made by management to report fraudulent financial statements, the most common reason for this will be threat by economic, industry or entity operating conditions to the financial stability and profitability of the company. Excessive pressure is placed on management to meet the forecast of an analyst, company projections or to repay debt obligations. The personal net worth of the stockholders and board of directors may be materially threatened by the company’s financial performance, and management may feel obligated to meet these demands. Management may inflate stock prices to preserve their reputation and be required to do whatever it takes to meet the goal. The bonuses of management may be tied to the company’s earnings and this is a big motivator for fraudulent reporting (Fox School of Business 2009). The misappropriation of assets in a company may be done because of personal financial pressure such as a home foreclosure, or a non-sharable problem such as drug use or gambling debts (Wells 2007)...
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...ethics 1 Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics By February 1, 2013 ACC 557: Financial Accounting Oleksii Morgun Strayer University at Arlington Campus School of Business Administration (M.S. Accounting Program) Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics 2 Abstract This research writing is to describe the following: 1. Given the corporate ethical breaches in recent times, assess whether or not you believe that the current business and regulatory environment is more conductive to ethical behavior. 2. Based on research, describe organization, the accounting ethical breach and the impact to the organization related to ethical breach. 3. Determine how the organizational ethical issue was detected and how management failed to create ethical environment. 4. Analyze the accounts impacted and/or accounting guidelines violated and the resulting impact to the business operation. 5. As a CFO, recommend which measures could have been taken to prevent this ethical breach and how each measure should be implemented in future. Assignment 1: Review of Accounting Ethics 3 Before the Enron and Andersen scandals, relatively little public attention was paid to the truthfulness of financial reporting. Of course, no one believed every company was beyond any suspicion of misrepresenting...
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...on one of the big financial fraud which occurred from 1986-2003. The case of HealthSouth is based on fraud, greed and corporate governance. The HealthSouth case shows that unethical management cannot succeed; sooner or later the truth comes out. The case highlights many key points and the major reason for the fraud was the result of failures of various standard mechanisms of control including the external auditors, the underwriters, and the board of directors, the financial market regulators and the analysts. HealthSouth was one of the country's largest providers of outpatient surgery, diagnostic imaging, and rehabilitation services, operating over 1,800 locations and reporting revenues of $4 billion. The company's management improperly accounted for some $2.7 billion of assets and earnings. Seventeen HealthSouth executives agreed to plead guilty to various charges in connection with this massive accounting fraud. B. Statement of the Problem: Thus, in the HealthSouth case, the research shows that it was close to the real life examples of the people who were “just employed”; however at the same time their transformation from the line of law-abiding citizens towards the law-breaking villains. Apparently the small compromises in morality and ethics led towards the greater compromises and as a result it turned into a full-scale commitment fraud (Johnson, 2005). C. Causes of the Problem: The structure of HealthSouth organization contributed to the fraud as it was run by...
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...In today’s business world , the characterized as the information age where media has extended its boundaries to reach even the smallest population across the globe, the board of directors of all corporations must go to extreme measures to maintain due diligence in every aspect of their duties in managing corporations. Any corporate transgressions can be immediately disclosed to the world through television, radio or internet. These perceptions of misconduct, whether true or false, can greatly affect the corporations’ position. Because of the critical affect that inappropriate conduct on the part of directors and corporate management has on the future of the corporation in addition to the adverse effects on all of its stakeholders, the United States government passes the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. This act was initiated in order to create a specific framework for auditing all functions of Board members to circumvent corruption as well as to encourage improvements in the stock market. Improving the confidence of stockholders in the United States was also a major consideration in the implementation of this legislation (Thompson, 2005). The passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 has developed a specific set of auditing tools and guidelines for directors. Directors now have a legal responsibility to follow these guidelines and their corporate bylaws or, as evidenced by the aforementioned scandals, face public scrutiny as well as criminal and civil action. According to John Nash...
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...HealthSouth Case including the activities and subsequent prosecution of its CEO, Richard Scrushy. “During the trial of former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy, federal prosecutors argued that Scrushy must have known something was amiss with HealthSouth’s financial statements since there was a discrepancy between the company’s financial and nonfinancial performance.” Over a ten-year period from 1987 to 1997, HealthSouth enjoyed above–average growth at a rate of 31 percent per year. (Jennings, 2012, 2009, p. 183) This phenomenal growth was due, in part, to a series of mergers and acquisitions let by the efforts of the company’s CEO, Richard Scrushy who ran the company with an iron fist and has at least one recorded conversation directing a CFO to fix the numbers over time. The fraud lasted for seven years and totaled approximately $2.7 billion. Mr. Scrushy denied knowing anything about the fraud, claimed it was all done by the people around him and was ultimately found not guilty of the fraud at HealthSouth but was convicted on bribery and corruption charges. Mr. Scrushy was ordered to pay $2.9 billion in restitution in a civil suit. “From at least 1996 until 2002, HealthSouth senior management perpetrated a financial statement fraud primarily through the use of nonstandard journal entries.” (Carmichael, 2010, p. 64) “Scrushy, once a high school dropout, worked as a gas station attendant and a bricklayer before retuning (sic) to school and earning his diploma. He studied...
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