Baker Michael (Michael Baker)

Baker Michael (Michael Baker)

Biography

2019: A sentence — 20 years of prison for fraud

At the beginning of January, 2019 the Federal Court of Appeal of the USA left without change a sentence by 20 years of prison of Michael Baker according to the results of the second hearing of the case of fraud in the amount of $750 million. Thus, the former CEO of ArthroCare lost the last opportunity for the appeal of a judicial verdict.

Case of Baker and the former chief financial officer of ArthroCare Michael Gluk for the first time obeyed in June, 2014. They were accused of the fraudulent scheme of assignment of revenues of the producer of surgical instruments due to clearing of product inventories — at first in collusion to the distributor of DiscoCare, and then by free providing the equipment to end users. ArthroCare was the only client of DiscoCare, did not purchase the distributor in December, 2007 yet.

Baker was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment, but submitted the appeal, having begun a new round of legal procedures. Gluck pled guilty later and gave evidences against Baker on the second legal procedure. The jury trial condemned Baker on 12 of 15 points, and in November, 2017 that was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment, a penalty in the amount of $1 million and confiscation of $12.7 million more again. After the second court Baker took Court of Appeal again. The last upheld a conviction of Baker without changes, having disproved the lawyer's arguments at all points.

Other former heads of ArthroCare David Applegate and John Raffle who pled guilty in 2013, were sentenced to five years and nearly seven years of imprisonment respectively, reported in the American Ministry of Justice. Michael Gluck was originally sentenced to 10 years, but for the help to court this term was reduced to 50 months in January, 2018.

The ArthroCare company which in January, 2014 on this trial agreed to pay a penalty in the amount of $30 million was purchased later by Smith & Nephew company for $1.7 billion^[1]

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