By Associated Press
Tuscaloosa AL – Jurors in the Medicaid fraud trial of Tuscaloosa physician Phillip Bobo acquitted him of all charges Monday after deliberating eight days.
The jury, which began deliberations Aug. 9, returned the not guilty verdict before lunch.
Bobo, 63, was charged with health care and wire fraud, tampering with witnesses and lying to the FBI and under oath at his first trial.
Bobo contended his actions and statements had been misrepresented by federal prosecutors and that he was negotiating a business arrangement with health care providers, not trying to pay them to drop out of any bidding on the contract to provide prenatal care to poor women in west Alabama.
Federal prosecutors accused Bobo of trying to rig the bidding process in 1999 with help from friends in then-Gov. Don Siegelman's administration. The government said he proposed a payoff of $800,000, including $550,000 from the state-funded Alabama Fire College in Tuscaloosa, where Bobo was medical director.
Bobo's conviction at his first trial in 2001 was thrown out by a federal appeals court, which said the indictment was faulty.
Siegelman and his chief of staff, Paul Hamrick, were charged with Bobo when he was indicted for the second trial. But federal prosecutors dropped the case against them in 2004 after a federal judge ruled there was not enough evidence to support a key conspiracy charge.