June 19--More than a decade after Edgewater Hospital and Medical Center collapsed amid mismanagement and a massive health care fraud scheme, the hospital's disgraced former owner appeared in a Chicago courtroom Friday to answer to perjury and obstruction of justice charges stemming from a nearly $200 million civil judgment against him.
Peter Rogan, 69, who had been fighting extradition from his home in Vancouver since his indictment in 2011, was taken into custody by U.S. marshals in Canada earlier this week after waiving extradition proceedings.
Rogan pleaded not guilty in a brief appearance before U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan, who ordered him to remain in custody pending a detention hearing on Wednesday.
In welcoming him back to Chicago, Der-Yeghiayan noted that since Rogan left for Canada in the late 2000s the Blackhawks have won three Stanley Cups.
"I am aware of that, your honor," Rogan quipped. "As you know, Canada is hockey crazy."
Outside court, Rogan's attorney, Todd Pugh, told reporters his client waived extradition so he could finally clear his name.
"It was time," Pugh said.
The former owner and chief executive officer of Edgewater Hospital, Rogan was charged in the indictment with conspiring with his attorney, Frederick Cuppy, to thwart efforts by the government and bank creditors to collect $188 million in civil judgments stemming from the fraud that led to the hospital's spectacular 2001 collapse into bankruptcy.
Rogan had previously been charged in a criminal complaint in 2008, but never appeared in Chicago to face those charges because he was detained in Canada on unrelated immigration proceedings.
The former hospital, located at 5700 North Ashland Avenue, closed in December 2001 after four doctors, a vice president and the hospital's management company were charged with massive health care fraud involving the payment of kickbacks for patient referrals and medically unnecessary hospital admissions, tests and services.
Rogan was not charged criminally at that time, but in 2002, federal prosecutors filed a civil lawsuit against him alleging he was responsible for Edgewater's submission of millions of dollars of false claims for reimbursement under the Medicare and Medicaid programs. In a 2006 bench trial, U.S. District Judge John Darrah found that Rogan had lied on the witness stand and destroyed documents to obstruct justice and entered a judgment of $64.2 million against him, records show.
The next year, the hospital's chief creditor, Dexia Credit Local, was awarded more than $124 million in its federal lawsuit against Rogan and his companies, records show.
The indictment alleged that between 2002 and 2010, Rogan and Cuppy schemed to hide details of a trust account in Rogan's name to keep prosecutors and other parties from collecting on the judgments. Over a five-year period beginning in 2002, more than $11 million was distributed from the trust for the benefit of Rogan and his wife, the indictment alleged.
Both Rogan and Cuppy lied to the court by denying they had any control over the Rogan Trust or its assets that a bank in the Bahamas managed, the indictment alleged.
Cuppy, 74, of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., pleaded guilty in 2013 and was sentenced to one year in prison, records show.
jmeisner@tribpub.com
