Ex-HealthSouth CFO Sentenced

The main witness in the fraud case against the founder and former chief executive of HealthSouth Corp. was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for his part in the $2.7-billion scheme.

William Owens, onetime chief financial officer of the rehabilitation and health services chain, secretly recorded conversations for the FBI and testified for 11 days against his former boss, Richard Scrushy. A federal jury acquitted Scrushy of all charges in June.

Owens is the last of the five former HealthSouth chief financial officers to be sentenced after pleading guilty to fraud.

Scrushy’s lawyers painted Owens as the mastermind of the conspiracy in the lengthy trial earlier this year. But U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn said she did not believe Owens was the architect of the fraud.

“That person in my view escaped justice,” Blackburn said. “I personally believe you told the truth in Mr. Scrushy’s trial.”

The judge added that a lengthy sentence was not necessary to deter Owens from committing another crime.

“The sentence I impose is to deter others. Corporate offenders are nothing more than common thieves wearing suits and wielding pens,” Blackburn said.

She then sentenced Owens to five years in prison and two years of probation. It was the harshest sentenced meted out so far to any of the 15 executives charged in the case.

Another former HealthSouth finance chief and whistle-blower, Weston Smith, was recently given 27 months in prison by a different judge, and former assistant controller Emery Harris spent five months in jail for his involvement in the multibillion-dollar accounting scandal.