Hospital Slumlord Update: Jurors find Texas hospital chain owner guilty on all 15 counts

[TexasTowelie]

Update at 4 p.m.:

Jurors have found Dr. Tariq Mahmood guilty on all 15 counts.

Mahmood faces up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced next spring.

Original entry:

Dr. Tariq Mahmood did not wield a “Charles Manson-like” power over employees, forcing them to alter Medicare billing codes for his Texas hospitals, his defense lawyer told jurors in the closing argument of his federal fraud trial this morning.

The Dallas businessman was merely a boss making “suggestions” to his billing coders, said attorney Michael Khouri. The staffers were the ones who made the “final decision’’ to change underlying diagnosis codes in claims for government reimbursements.

Just before jurors began their deliberations around noon, Khouri spent 45 minutes attacking prosecutors’ case that Mahmood orchestrated a scheme to defraud Medicare by submitting more than $1.1 million in bogus billing claims. It was the attorney’s first real salvo. In the previous three days of trial testimony, he only called one witness. Prosecutors put on more than a dozen.

Khouri portrayed Mahmood, who at one time owned six hospitals, as a good man and doctor who rescued hospitals from bankruptcy.

More at http://watchdogblog.dallasnews.com/2014/07/tx-hospital-chain-owner-is-not-charles-manson-his-attorney-says-jurors-now-deliberating.html/ .

[font color=green]I don't understand why they are postponing the sentence until next spring. He belongs in prison NOW.[/font]


Prior thread with additional links:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/107819685

[shenmue]

1. Hopefully Rick Scott will be next!