فصل 51

51

Attorneys, Attorneys, and More Attorneys

The next morning I got a preview of what my life was going to be like for a while. The headlines of the Gainesville Sun read, “FBI Raids Alachua Medical Manager Offices.” Underneath was my picture next to the story heading, “Wall Street Halts the Trading of WebMD Stock Just Before Noon.” I knew it didn’t make any difference that I hadn’t done anything and that I didn’t even know what the raid was all about—I was headline news. I had never been publicly disgraced before, and I noticed that it definitely stirred up the psyche. That voice inside my head kept wanting to explain that this had nothing to do with me. There was certainly no lack of people wanting to hear what I had to say. Media outlets from all over the country, including the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, were trying to reach me for a comment.

Fortunately, I knew better. I had spent all these years quieting down that mental voice, and I had learned that listening to it only fuels the fire. I knew how powerful it was to simply relax and release past that urge to defend oneself. I resolved to only discuss the matter when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, I would just go about my business as usual. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so why should I let this affect me? Over time it would work itself out. In the meantime, I was not going to let it steal the great peace and joy I felt deep inside. Right from the beginning, I resolved to use the whole situation to finally free myself from whatever was left of that scared person inside who had always held me back. This was my entire journey—liberation at any cost.

We had a conference call with the corporate attorneys first thing in the morning. No one could make sense of what had happened. Regardless, the first order of business was to hire an attorney. Well, not exactly an attorney—separate law firms to represent both the company and the board of directors, and a criminal attorney for everyone whose name was on the list. I could see that the corporate attorneys were taking this very seriously. They explained that it didn’t matter if you were as clean as a whistle; a raid of this magnitude foreshadowed major problems, and everyone needed legal representation. That meant at least twenty attorneys. I soon found out even that wasn’t going to be enough. The investigation was coming out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charleston, South Carolina, so it was suggested that the senior executives also line up attorneys licensed to practice there. So now we were talking about hiring thirty to forty attorneys, plus two firms for the company. If I hadn’t been stunned by the raid, I was certainly going to be stunned by what it meant to defend yourself against it.

I couldn’t relate to suddenly being thrust into this situation. I knew absolutely nothing about criminal matters; I had never even thought about the subject. This made me very naive about the inherent danger I could be facing. If I had been left on my own, I probably would have figured that since I didn’t do anything, I should just go in and talk to the government. Fortunately, I was surrounded by savvy businesspeople who knew that you don’t do anything until you consult an attorney and find out what’s going on. I certainly learned the wisdom of that advice as events unfolded.

Over the next few weeks, WebMD’s board hired Williams and Connolly to represent the company. This firm was not the largest in Washington, but it had the reputation of being one of the best for this sort of case. I asked Jim Mercer, since he was the attorney I respected the most, to help me select my attorney. I was a novice and he was an expert. I really appreciated all the help and support I got from him. Jim steered me to an attorney at Williams and Connolly who gave me a list of highly respected criminal lawyers whom he had worked with in the past. It seemed like such a big decision. I wouldn’t have any idea how to interview a top-notch criminal attorney. I followed Jim’s advice and started to set up preliminary meetings with some of the attorneys—but in my heart, I knew I was going to leave this decision up to the flow of life.

As it turned out, events unfolded such that I met with only one attorney, Randy Turk. Randy was a senior partner with Baker Botts, one of the country’s oldest and most respected law firms. His résumé read like a Who’s Who in the white-collar criminal defense world. It ran from successfully defending Hughes Aircraft Company against a $400 million claim by the U.S. government regarding repair of the Hubble space telescope, to being one of the key lawyers on the defense team for Michael K. Deaver, Reagan White House deputy chief of staff, at a trial of allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice. The list went on and on.

Of all the information I could gather about Randy, it was something the attorney at Williams and Connolly said that influenced me the most. He had heard that I had a ponytail and lived in the woods. He told me that of all the top defense attorneys he knew, Randy was the most avant-garde. The attorney felt that based on what he had heard about me, Randy and I would get along great.

I met Randy for the first time in New York. He flew in for the WebMD shareholder meeting to meet with me and Jim Mercer, who was helping me select my attorney. I was immediately comfortable with Randy. He had been defending people against government charges for more than thirty years. He practiced in Washington and was obviously very successful. Randy seemed to be intrigued by the case and my unique background. He had learned what he could from his contact at Williams and Connolly, and Jim and I proceeded to tell him what we knew.

WebMD had gotten a much better idea of the focus of the government’s investigation by the time Randy and I met. As we had suspected, Bobby Davids was behind all of this. After the company had successfully subpoenaed his hidden bank accounts in early 2003, Bobby knew he was caught. It was just a matter of time before we realized that he had stolen almost six million dollars in kickbacks and embezzlement schemes. He was going to prison for a very long time. But Bobby was a con man, and apparently a very good one. He had certainly conned us for years while managing to carry out his fraud undetected. In March 2003, Bobby Davids embarked on the con of his life—how to avoid punishment for what he had done. He walked into the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charleston, South Carolina, near where he lived, and presented himself as a whistle-blower. He told the federal authorities that he was an executive who had been involved in massive accounting fraud at a public company. He admitted that as part of this fraud he had taken kickbacks for himself and a few others, but he was prepared to turn in the entire upper management team if the government was prepared to cut him a deal.

For the next six months leading up to the raid, while WebMD attorneys were openly investigating all that Davids and his group had done, Bobby Davids was secretly hand-feeding the government an intricate web of lies. Davids was, in fact, a CPA in charge of the entire dealer acquisition program. As such, he had detailed knowledge of every acquisition and every supporting document. Davids was completely free to create the entire frame of reference for the government about the company and its executives. With the skill of a Picasso, he was painting a masterpiece on the blank canvas of people’s minds. All he had to do was be sure he told the story in a way that would later be supportable by the documents they would find. He knew there was not going to be any hard evidence found to support his “world according to Bobby.” But if he says that he was told to do a deal in a certain way, and he could later show that, indeed, the deal was done that way—that would support his story. The problem is that it would not support the “he was told” part. But if he tells the government investigators what they’re going to find, and they keep finding it, that would lend credence to the rest of his story. Eventually, he would earn their confidence. If knowledge is power, then Bobby Davids had all the power. In that early interaction with the government, he was the one with all the knowledge.

Randy explained that this was not an unusual situation. The government forms a view and then tries to find evidence to support that view. That is what the FBI was currently doing with the mass of documents taken during the raid. Randy said the problem with that many documents is that you can always find a way to make them say what you want. On that ominous note, Randy agreed to defend me to the best of his ability, and we shook hands. I could never have known the odyssey we were about to embark on together. Nor could I have known how close our friendship would become. All I knew at the time was that the same flow of life’s events that had led me into this mess had just led me to my lead attorney. Following this flow was my great experiment, and there was no turning back now.