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Monday, February 21, 2011
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Issue 28 I N D E P E N D E N T
PUBLISHED SINCE 1906
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Former CFO recounts riches-to-rags story Aaron Beam shares moral account of fall from CFO of HealthSouth to yard worker Tiffany Minnis Staff Writer Aaron Beam, former CFO of HealthSouth, spoke to a full and attentive room Wednesday, detailing his journey as a former millionaire turned yardman. In 1984, Beam helped co-found the company with his boss Richard Marin Scrushy. Now, HealthSouth is known as one of the nation’s largest providers of outpatient surgery and rehabilitative services. “Within six months it was clear to me the company was going to be a success,” Beam said. When the company went public in 1986, Beam became a millionaire in two months. The company has continued expanding and now operates in all 50 states, employs 40,000 people and ranks 350 on the Fortune 500 list. “The wealth changed me and certainly changed Richard,” Beam said. “He was the visionary that started a whole segment on the stock market.” This new success changed when the company began to miss consecutive quarters and Scrushy began to make false promises to keep investors. Initially involved in cooking the books, Beam, along with others, began to alter numbers and lie to auditors. At the time, Beam said he didn’t think it was fraud. “We had done everything to the numbers we thought we could get away with,” Beam said. In 1997 Beam, refusing to be involved in ille-
gal activities any longer, sold his share in the stock and resigned from the company. Years passed, and he heard nothing about the scandal in the media, and he mistakenly believed that HealthSouth was indeed making its numbers. Beam would later find out that someone had blown the whistle on the fraud. In the spring of 2003, Beam and the other financial officers testified against Scrushy when the case went to trial in 2005, lasting three months. The company had accumulated more than half a billion dollars in accounting fraud, but Scrushy was found not guilty of all charges, while Beam was sentenced to three months in prison. After Beam told a few prison stories to fill the room with laughter, he took a serious tone. Beam said he went back to junior college at the age of 65, got a certificate in turf management and earned his money legally. “I literally sleep better,” Beam said. Beam, though he helped to create one of the most successful health care companies, is also credited for one of the biggest frauds in history. Beam left the audience with a word of ethical advice, though. “I think today, we should start teaching ethics in high schools and colleges as well as jobs,” Beam said. “That way you won’t make the same mistakes I made.” Students said they enjoyed many aspects of Beam’s lecture. “I enjoyed the speaker’s presentation,” David Rhodes, senior in psychology, said. “It was entertaining and educational.”
Thomas Brantley • The Daily Beacon
Aaron Beam, former CFO of HealthSouth, speaks to students about the dangers of corporate fraud on Wednesday, Feb. 16. Beam, who was sentenced to time in federal prison for his involvement in fraud, spoke of the importance of honesty in business and how his time in prison helped him realize the truly important things in life.
Texas bill to allow guns on campuses Associated Press AUSTIN, Texas— Texas is preparing to give college students and professors the right to carry guns on campus, adding momentum to a national campaign to open this part of society to firearms. More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2009 and is expected to do so again. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who sometimes packs a pistol when he jogs, has said he’s in favor of the idea. Texas has become a prime battleground for the issue because of its gun culture and its size, with 38 public universities and more than 500,000 students. It would become the second state, following Utah, to pass such a broad-based law. Colorado gives colleges the option and several have allowed handguns. Supporters of the legislation argue that gun violence on campuses, such as the mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois in 2008, show that the best defense against a gunman is students who can shoot back. “It’s strictly a matter of self-defense,” said state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio. “I don’t ever want to see repeated on a Texas college campus what happened at Virginia Tech, where some deranged, suicidal madman goes into a building and is able to pick off totally defenseless kids like sitting ducks.” Until the Virginia Tech incident, the worst college shooting in U.S. history occurred at the University of Texas, when sniper Charles Whitman went to the top of the administration tower in 1966 and killed 16 people and wounded dozens. Last September, a University of Texas student fired several shots from an assault rifle before killing himself. Similar firearms measures have been proposed in about a dozen other states, but all face strong opposition, especially from college leaders. In Oklahoma, all 25 public college and university presidents declared their opposition to a concealed carry proposal. “There is no scenario where allowing concealed weapons on college campuses will do anyTara Sripunvoraskul • The Daily Beacon thing other than create a more dangerous enviSharon Thompson, director of the Center for Agriculture and Food Security and ronment for students, faculty, staff and visitors,” Preparedness and professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, speaks about the pos- Oklahoma Chancellor of Higher Education Glen sibilities of food terrorism during the UT Science Forum on Friday, Feb. 18. Thompson dis- Johnson said in January. University of Texas President William Powers cussed how international issues can affect the food supply of local foods.
has opposed concealed handguns on campus, saying the mix of students, guns and campus parties is too volatile. Guns occupy a special place in Texas culture. Politicians often tout owning a gun as essential to being Texan. Concealed handgun license holders are allowed to skip the metal detectors that scan Capitol visitors for guns, knives and other contraband. Guns on campus bills have been rejected in 23 states since 2007, but gun control activists acknowledge it will be difficult to stop the Texas bill from passing this year. “Things do look bleak,” said Colin Goddard, assistant director of federal legislation for the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, who was in Austin recently to lobby against the Texas bills. Goddard was a student at Virginia Tech when he was shot four times in his French class. Student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people, including 10 in Goddard’s classroom, before shooting himself. Goddard dismisses the idea that another student with a gun could have stopped the killer. “People tell me that if they would have been there, they would have shot that guy. That offends me,” Goddard said. “People want to be the hero, I understand that. They play video games and they think they understand the reality. It’s nothing like that.” But Derek Titus, a senior at Texas A&M who has a state license to carry a concealed handgun, said someone with a gun that day could have improved the chances of survival. “Gun-free zones are shooting galleries for the mass murderers,” Titus said. “We do not feel that we must rely on the police or security forces to defend our lives.” Texas enacted its concealed handgun law in 1995, allowing people 21 or older to carry weapons if they pass a training course and a background check. The state had 461,724 license holders as of Dec. 31, according to the state Department of Public Safety. Businesses, schools and churches can set rules banning guns on their premises. On college campuses, guns are prohibited in buildings, dorms and certain grounds around them. Opponents of campus gun rights say students and faculty would live in fear of their classmates and colleagues, not knowing who might pull a gun over a poor grade, a broken romance or a drunken fraternity argument. Frankie Shulkin, a first-year law student at the University of Texas, said he doesn’t think he’d feel safer if other students in his classes had guns.
NYC man kills four, court date forthcoming Associated Press After slashing his stepfather to death with a kitchen knife, 23-year-old Maksim Gelman headed to the home of a female acquaintance, killed her mother, then waited patiently for hours for the young woman to arrive so he could kill her, too, police said. Initially, authorities thought it was the case of a jilted lover, angry at an ex-girlfriend. But it became clear later the killings — two of four that Gelman is accused of committing during a rampage that lasted 28 hours — had a much more complicated motive. Victim Yelena Bulchenko, 20, had a longtime boyfriend, and some of her friends didn’t know the suspect. They said the only relationship the
Ukraine-born Gelman had with the woman was in his mind. If he snapped, they said, it was because he couldn’t have her. “He did not know her. He was not her boyfriend,” said Gerard Honig, Bulchenko’s boyfriend of two years who said he lived with the family. “She said he was creepy. He was weird, he was a stalker.” Authorities are still piecing together the case. The attacks that swept up strangers, as well as people in the suspect’s life, prompted questions about what could unleash such a sprawling and sudden burst of violence from someone with no known history of it. “It’s a very bizarre case. It’s hard to understand what the motivation was,” said Louis B. Schlesinger, a forensic psychology professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal
Justice. “We don’t have enough facts yet,” he said. Gelman is accused of killing Yelena and her mother, 56-year-old Anna Bulchenko, who was at the home when he arrived, after killing his stepfather over an argument about the keys to his mother’s Lexus, authorities said. He waited at the Bulchenko home for hours, police said. Yelena arrived home around 4 p.m. to find her mother in a pool of blood, and Gelman chased her outside and stabbed her 11 times, authorities said. He later ran over a pedestrian and attacked random people, police said. At the time of his arrest, he muttered “she had to die” to police, but it wasn’t clear to whom he was referring, police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. Gelman has been indicted on charges of mur-
der and attempted murder but has not issued a plea, and was being held without bail. His attorney had no comment. Gelman said at the time of his arrest that it was a setup, and speaking to tabloid reporters from Bellevue Hospital where he was being held, he said: “Sometimes my mind isn’t right.” Bulchenko’s friends were surprised when they found out who was accused of killing her. Some had never heard of him. Those who did say he was obsessed with the woman, who worked as a dental assistant in Brooklyn. “She wanted nothing to do with him,” said her friend Aleksandra Ilyayeva. The New York Post reported that Gelman had a makeshift shrine dedicated to Bulchenko where he used to spray paint.