The Justice Department has indicted 10 former executives at a former unit of WebMD Corp., alleging the executives conspired to inflate earnings at the unit by more than $16.8 million between 1997 to 2001, as well as engaging in money laundering.
Former Medical Manager Health Systems Inc. chief executive Mickey Singer was among the executives charged.
Medical Manager, formerly based in Tampa, Fla., was a unit of WebMD Corp. from 2000 to 2005 and had nationwide operations. The unit is now known as Emdeon Practice Services and is part of Emdeon Corp. in Elwood Park, N.J.
The government said that the executives used a variety of tricks to inflate earnings, including round-trip transactions -- paying inflated prices for firms it was acquiring and then requiring the acquired firm to purchase software from Medical Manager.
The case was investigated by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service, and will be prosecuted by the United States Attorney's Office in South Carolina and the Fraud Section of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division in Washington.
