with facilities in each of the 50 U.S. states and revenues in excess of $181 million. Over the next decade, HealthSouth's sports medicine programs received international attention by being linked to star athletes including Bo Jackson, who served as the president of HealthSouth's Sports Medicine Council; Roger Clemens; Jack Nicklaus, Kyle Petty; Michael Jordan; Shaquille O'Neal, and Lúcio Carlos Cajueiro Souza. At its height, HealthSouth employed more than 50,000 physicians, was the "nation's largest provider of outpatient surgery and rehabilitative and diagnostic healthcare services", and had over 2,000 facilities in the United States, Puerto Rico, Australia, and the United Kingdom. HealthSouth facilities worldwide saw more than 120,000 patients daily, and with earnings around $106 million in 1997, Scrushy was the third-highest-paid CEO in the U.S. Legal battles Although HealthSouth grew tremendously throughout the 1990s, becoming the largest comprehensive rehabilitative services company in the U.S., ethical and financial questions began to arise as early as 1989. An internal auditor alleged that he was fired for drawing attention to HealthSouth's financial problems and that he was pressured to meet certain earnings targets. Two years later, in 1991, HealthSouth was accused by Medicare of illegally adding costs to reports for outpatient physical therapy and inpatient rehabilitation admissions at the corporation's Bakersfield Rehabilitation Hospital. In 1998, Medicare changed its funding arrangements in an attempt to reduce exploitation and payments by $100 billion. Scrushy insisted that the change would not affect HealthSouth's bottom line but profits dropped by 93 percent by the end of the year. Around this same time, HealthSouth began facing additional accusations of fraud. An investigation by the insurance company Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama determined that HealthSouth had "improperly billed Medicare for therapy by students, interns and other unlicensed aides". Additional lawsuits alleged HealthSouth had committed widespread abuse of Medicare by "billing for services it never provided, delivering poor care, treating patients without a formal plan of care, and using unlicensed therapists". In March 2003, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil suit against Scrushy and HealthSouth alleging the company had falsified at least $2.7 billion worth of profit between 1996 and 2002. HealthSouth agreed to pay the United States government $325 million on December 30, 2004, in order to "settle allegations that the company defrauded Medicare and other federal healthcare programs". Birmingham criminal trial On February 6, 2003, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced