Word: gerber
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...bodies in question belongs to the recently deceased Dr. Michael Gerber, chairman of the pathology department at the Louisiana institution. The doctor was alive and nervous in September as agents from the IRS's criminal-investigation division began questioning members of his department about its finances. Gerber's associates recall his behaving erratically and constantly phoning for legal advice. Then on Oct. 12, in Tennessee, his daughter Elisa, 21, walked away from the wreck of a car she had driven into two trees. She said she had been tired. Apparently she had fallen asleep at the wheel. There were...
...Aizenhawar Marrogi, a former colleague of Gerber's, does not quite believe he is dead. An Iraqi immigrant named after Dwight D. Eisenhower, Marrogi was once a star of Gerber's department, bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars in research grants and computerizing the department's billing system. But Marrogi and Gerber were soon quarreling over the billing system, with Gerber setting up his own balance sheet and issuing accounting statements that Marrogi and other physicians disputed. The dubious statements included payments for services at Charity Hospital, a public facility where Tulane doctors work with indigent patients. Marrogi believes...
While Tulane dismisses Marrogi's suspicions as far-fetched, documents examined by TIME as well as interviews with witnesses who have testified to the IRS illustrate financial machinations that appear to have Gerber at their center and, at the very least, paint a portrait of a prestigious university shoddily run. Indeed, the school's officials and its legal counsel openly contradict one another. The vice chancellor for finance, Ray Newman, contends that doctors are due compensation for work at Charity Hospital (which produces revenues for the university of $20 million to $30 million in payments), even as general counsel John...
...center of the financial dispute. Last week Dr. Samuel Parry, a plastic surgeon who had taught as a full professor at Tulane for 12 years, brought a class action charging that the university has systematically withheld fees earned by Tulane faculty members at Charity Hospital. Marrogi's suspicions about Gerber began over Charity billings--and compensation. "I started looking at what he was giving us, and I knew it was impossible," says Marrogi. One department memo claimed Marrogi had billed $9,000 to Charity over a year. But Marrogi had filed 1,100 lab reports that would have been billed...
...Gerber's scheme, a former insider at the department tells TIME, "was to short-circuit the money before it reached the university" and thus have his department directly receive payments. To bypass the university's accounting service, Gerber had one of his secretaries rent an outside post-office box under the name "Tulane Pathology Group." Bonnie Jones Jackson, who was in charge of billing for the department, said she was sent twice a week to pick up checks from the mail drop. At first she did what she was told without asking questions. But gradually it began to occur...