Business manager of Alabama anesthesia practice sentenced for failure to file required annual report for profit-sharing plan

Atlanta — The business manager of Jasper Anesthesia Care Inc. in Jasper, Alabama, was ordered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama in Jasper to pay of $46,844.79 in restitution to the company’s profit-sharing plan plus a $100 special assessment. Haze Edward Persons also was sentenced to 10 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

Persons pleaded guilty to a one-count information for failure to file a Form 5500 annual report as required by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. According to the plea, Persons was the plan administrator responsible for ensuring that employee contributions deducted from paychecks were deposited into the profit-sharing plan. Instead, Persons diverted the money into his own account and those of his wife and stepson. Persons further stated in the plea that he was aware of the annual report filing requirement for the profit-sharing plan, but he failed to file the report because the report would have had to address his failure to deposit all contributions owed to the plan.

The company, which ceased doing business in 2006, provided contracted medical and anesthetic services for local area hospitals. The company sponsored the profit-sharing plan for 19 participants; however, only eight were affected by Persons’ actions.

The criminal case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Birmingham, Alabama, and was investigated by the Atlanta Regional Office of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) and Office of Inspector General, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Theft of workers’ retirement saving is a particularly heinous crime. This case reaffirms the Labor Department’s commitment to protect workers’ benefits by identifying criminal activity wherever and whenever it occurs,” said R.C. Marshall, director of EBSA’s Atlanta Regional Office.

U.S. v. Persons
Criminal Number 6:09-cr-00012

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