The Supreme Court refused to review the conviction of former McKesson (NYSE:MCK) chairman & CEO Charles McCall in an accounting scandal, meaning his 10-year prison sentence will stand.
The high court provided no comment on the denial. San Francisco, Calif.-based McKesson is the largest drug distributor in the U.S., and also deals in healthcare information technology products.
McCall, convicted of securities fraud in 2009, asked the Supremes in January to throw out the verdict against him, claiming that a lower court judge inappropriately asked the jury to consider whether he "recklessly disregarded" warnings of accounting misdeeds at the company, resulting in an inappropriate conviction for securities fraud, a 10-year federal prison sentence and a $1 million fine.
McCall was convicted in federal court of 5 counts of securities fraud and circumventing accounting rules in a scheme that cost investors $8.6 billion dollars in the late 1990s. He and McKesson general counsel Jay Lapine were accused of hiding backdated sales contracts from auditors, as well as other activities that artificially inflated the company’s revenue figures.
The Supreme Court repeal bid followed other failed attempts to get the verdict overturned through the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.