Four years ago Democrats pushed the premise that Rick Scott deserved intense scrutiny due to questionable business ethics, at the least, after his former health care company Columbia/HCA received the largest fine for Medicare abuse in U.S. history. Scott had left the company at the time it was fined, but critics say he was at the head of the company when it was involved in wrongdoing, and had to know what was going on.
In July 1997, FBI agents raided Columbia/HCA accounting offices in seven states, including Florida. Within days, Columbia’s board of directors dumped Scott, but gave him a nearly $10 million severance package, including stock shares worth $300 million and a $1 million per year consulting contract.
Ultimately the company wound up paying more than $1.7 billion for defrauding the federal Medicare and Medicaid program
But despite that history, Scott still beat out Democrat Alex Sink in the 2010 gubernatorial election. Four years later, the Charlie Crist campaign is trying to revive the issue, as they hosted a news conference in Tallahassee today where John Schilling, a former employee at Columbia/HCA said today, "There is no doubt in mind that Rick Scott was a leader in a criminal enterprise."
Schilling was a reimbursement supervisor for the hospital chain in the mid-1990s and became an undercover informant for the FBI. He said there were two sets of books, one for insiders and another for government auditors. “Fraud was in the DNA of Rick Scott’s company from the very beginning, and he was the father.”
A portion of Schilling's news conference can be seen after the jump.
Schilling has been a CPA who works with whistleblowers on healthcare cases. He said he's worked with the FBI to "expose the criminal fraud" led by Governor Scott. He said the fraud was "stealing from the American taxpayer," and eroded Medicare.Schilling says he uncovered that HCA/Columbia was carrying two sets of books, "ripping off the taxpayer." One was sent to the feds to obtain Medicare reimbursement and the other for internal keeping.
A spokesman for the governor, Greg Blair, told the Tampa Tribune, “All Charlie has is 20-year-old mudslinging because he is desperate to distract from losing 832,000 jobs and his knowledge of the crimes of Jim Greer and Scott Rothstein – Charlie’s top campaign fundraisers who were both jailed for fraud and corruption.
