HealthSouth Corp. fraud case

from Yahoo news: bq. Five workers who made false accounting entries during a huge fraud at HealthSouth Corp. kept silent out of fear after realizing the company was buying guns, grenades and spy equipment, according to testimony Wednesday at the first sentencing in the case. bq. Emery Harris, a former assistant controller at the Birmingham-based health care giant, said he and four subordinates facing prison time and hefty fines were afraid to report what was going on to authorities. bq. The fear intensified as they saw invoices coming in for weapons, small cameras hidden in plants, car-tracking devices and disguises with wigs, Harris said. more: bq. One manager ordered numbers faked after a meeting with executives, including then-CEO Richard Scrushy, Harris said. But Harris testified he got orders to falsify numbers from managers other than Scrushy, who has since been fired. And now Richard M Scrushy's story: bq. In its never-ending effort to convert allegations of accounting fraud into a dime-store novel, the United States prosecutors now claim, incredibly, that HealthSouth ran its own private militia. bq. At his sentencing hearing yesterday, government cooperator Emery Harris testified that during his employment at HealthSouth, he saw invoices for hand grenades, automatic weapons, and other munitions. Harris claims that despite his purported moral qualms, he continued to participate in a fraud at HealthSouth because he feared violent retaliation by HealthSouth management. more: bq. Think about it: Machine guns and hand grenades cannot be purchased at Wal-Mart or over the Internet. In fact, they cannot be purchased legally in the United States at all, without a lengthy and complicated application and registration process through the federal government. Interesting to see what develops...