Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy

It was an item that seemed to go all but unnoticed last week, at least judging from the attention it got on TV (none) or in the news pages (brief notice, buried inside).

Richard Scrushy – former HealthSouth CEO, Archweasel of the Grand Duchy of Alabama and looter extraordinaire in a state where the looting of public assets is considered the highest calling of public service – was ordered to pay up.

A state judge in Montgomery ordered Scrushy – whose net worth at last report was down to a poverty-line $284 million – to pay upward of $3 billion to shareholders who had filed suit over years of HealthSouth execs overstating assets and earnings. Circuit Judge Allwin E. Horn ruled that Scrushy “knew of and participated in” phony earnings reports filed with regulators between 1996 and 2002.

Scrushy, in case the name doesn’t ring a bell, is the fat cat who used his ill-gotten millions to buy himself a “Christian” radio show, which in turn enabled him to co-opt a handful of gullible preachers to pollute the jury pool in his federal fraud case.

He dodged that rap but was convicted on a bribery charge, along with former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, in a case that might have been contaminated by the simple fact that it was prosecuted by the Bush Justice Department. Enough said. Meanwhile, Scrushy is, at least for the time being, on ice in the Big House, where if there’s any justice, he’s made the close acquaintance of new friends with nicknames like Big Bubba and Tony The Tool.

This is another one of those infuriating instances where some thieving dirtbag who’s been living large on other people’s money gets caught and supposedly “ruined” -- but still manages to come out of it all fabulously rich. How exactly does that happen?

One Alabama judge is obviously trying to make sure it doesn’t.
If the numbers are accurate -- and Scrushy doesn’t have a massive offshore stash somewhere (and don’t rule it out) -- he obviously can’t pay the reparations the judge has ordered.

Which brings to mind a onetime federal judge named Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who would become the first commissioner of baseball after the Black Sox Scandal of 1919. Landis once sentenced an aging burglar to 20 years. The man pleaded, “But Judge, I’m more than 70 years old. I can’t serve that long.”
“Well,” Landis told him, “do the best you can.”

Richard Scrushy needs to do the best he can. To the last nickel.
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