He was acquitted of criminal charges in a 2005 trial, during which the public’s attitude seemed to turn from fury to scorn. But two years later, he was convicted on unrelated bribery charges for arranging $500,000 in donations to Alabama’s former governor, Don E. Siegelman, in exchange for a seat on a state board. Mr. Scrushy, 58, is currently serving a seven-year sentence in Beaumont, Tex.

Then, in 2009, a judge presiding over a suit brought by HealthSouth shareholders found that Mr. Scrushy had actively participated in the systematic reporting of false profits. He ordered Mr. Scrushy, who estimated his net worth in 2003 at $300 million, to pay $2.87 billion to HealthSouth in damages for the accounting fraud.

Since then, it has become a matter of collecting it.

“We got a $2.9 billion judgment, and our job is to satisfy that judgment,” said John Somerville, who represents the lead shareholder in the suit. “Part of our job is to seize assets and sell those, and that can include the $5 million lake house and that can include the $3 dollar lampshade.”

In May, Freeman’s, a Philadelphia-based auction house, will hold an auction of some of Mr. Scrushy’s art collection, which includes works by Picasso and Renoir. The weekend yard sale brought in about $164,000, said John C. Jones, a representative for Freeman’s who helped arrange it. That is a tiny fraction of the $100 million in assets collected so far, but a tidy sum nonetheless.

Hundreds of bargain hunters, many of them estate sale regulars who spoke in accents that would be familiar to Mr. Scrushy from his upbringing in Selma, Ala., lined up on a cool Saturday morning outside the stately back gate. Some came for vindication and others as voyeurs, but most were there for the values.