Jonathan Porter, Partner with the law firm Husch Blackwell and former DOJ prosecutor who, on February 21, 2024, agreed with Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns that the U. S. Government’s evidence against Dr. Shiva Akula was “underwhelming.”
On March 6, 2024, we produced this feature wherein we focused on Kelly Anderson, a key prosecution witness in the Medicare fraud trial of Dr. Shiva Akula, an infectious disease doctor but who also owned what became the largest hospice operator in Louisiana, Canon Hospice.
Specifically, we posed the question entailing whether Anderson may obtain a “boat load of money” arising from her qui tam lawsuit wherein she assisted Federal prosecutors (for four years and without Dr. Akula’s knowledge despite continuing to be on his payroll) in obtaining medical records, participating in recorded phone calls with Akula, and other similar actions at the behest of the FBI and U. S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans. Our assertion was that Anderson, just as Akula defense attorney David DeVillers argued in opening arguments of the trial, was in fact going to come into a “boat load of money” which we speculated was likely to be in the neighborhood of $900,000.
We had previously, on November 7, 2023, presented this feature, which focused on the fact that Akula was convicted on 23 counts of Medicare fraud. In that feature, we provided links for our day-by-day coverage of the trial.
On May 15, 2024, Dr. Akula was sentenced to 20 years in Federal prison and ordered to pay just over $42.1 million in restitution.
On June 12, 2024, Federal Judge Lance Africk signed this Order directing financial institutions holding nearly $3.8 million in funds for Akula to remit such funds to the U. S. Federal Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana Clerk. Obviously, those payments from the financial institutions will be applied toward the $42.1 million in restitution for which Akula has been adjudged responsible for repaying to taxpayers.
On February 21, 2024, Jonathan Porter, law partner with the prominent law firm Husch Blackwell , engaged alongside another of Husch Blackwell’s attorneys, Meg Pekarske, to produce this fascinating podcast of the entire Akula trial. We at Sound Off Louisiana were thrilled that Porter relied heavily upon the daily recaps of our coverage of the trial we published on the November 7, 2023 linked-feature above.
What we’re about to do is to provide our final video feature on the Akula matter and integrate Porter and Perarske’s commentary at key segments of that video with Burns providing some postmortem observations on the trial. First, however, we’d like to remind everyone that, in our written commentary from Day 4 of the Akula trial, Burns had this to say:
Despite its best efforts (and they did present a very excruciatingly-detailed case along with a considerable amount of innuendo), we believe the prosecution has failed to directly tie Akula to any purposeful intent to defraud the government. We would vote to acquit on all counts, and we predict that the jury will do the same after an estimated 4-5 hours of deliberation.
Obviously, we called that one dead wrong, and some of the postmortem observations we’re about to present in the video will, we believe, help explain why. Nevertheless, we stand by our contention that the U. S. Government failed to clear the bar of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” but, as we have emphasized, it’s not what we think that matters (nor even Porter for that matter). It’s the verdict the jury rendered that matters, and that jury found Akula guilty after a rather short period of deliberations. Furthermore, we stress the need to honor that verdict as being respectful of our judicial system and not do as Plaintiff attorney Phil Preis recently did after the Stanford victims trial and blame the jury for why the verdict didn’t go his way (see this feature).
Okay. Now for that video:
Sound Off Louisiana final wrap up of the Akula criminal trial incorporating commentary by Porter and Pekarske’s 2/21/24 podcast and Burns providing some final postmortem observations of the criminal trial.
We find Porter and Pekarske’s observations in the above video to be very intriguing on this whole matter and, just as the subheading says on their podcast about ways for health care providers to avoid Dr. Akula’s fate, Burns too emphasizes near the end of the above video that, for any doctors who may be, “playing loose with those Medicare codes,” tighten it up!
So, that’s the final wrap of the Dr. Shiva Akula criminal trial unless and until there may be a ruling from the U. S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans entailing Akula’s appeal of his conviction. We hope all our site visitors who took the time to follow the matter found it interesting and informative.