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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A federal grand jury has indicted a 49-year-old Baton Rouge man, already accused of stealing thousands of dollars from the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, with trying to steal almost $300,000 from other health care centers.
U.S. Attorney Walt Green says Larry Butler was arrested in Tacoma, Washington, on Monday almost a month after Baton Rouge police issued a warrant for his arrest. He's accused of charging over $16,000 for personal items using Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center's credit cards.
He had been employed as a director of the facilities at the center, and the discrepancies only came to light after he announced he was leaving the center for another job.
But now the U.S. Attorney's Office says that incident was a small fraction of a far larger scheme.
Green tells The Advocate (http://tinyurl.com/lrtrue6 ) Butler had been orchestrating a scheme since July 2013 to defraud hundreds of thousands of dollars from other institutions.
Besides Mary Bird Perkins, the indictment says Butler also worked at Louisiana Health Cooperative, a nonprofit health insurance cooperative in Covington, where he also used credit cards in that company's name to get cash advances and purchase items for his personal use.
Butler is accused of using the money for traveling, food and furniture.
The indictment against Butler includes wire fraud, false representation of a Social Security number and aggravated identity theft.
It was unclear whether Butler has an attorney.
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Information from: The Advocate, http://theadvocate.com
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