Covington businessman Bay Ingram's ownership in hospital targeted in legal battle | NOLA.com

Description: As cleanup crews rushed to save what they could of Louisiana's coast following the 2010 oil spill, a group of investors on the north shore ran their own race: turning a vacant building into an upscale surgical hospital in three months, before a change in federal law would ruin their efforts. Cypress Pointe Surgical Hospital in Hammond, which got off the ground with investments from doctors, had to be approved by inspectors by the end of the year, when physician-owned hospitals could no longer participate in Medicare. Missing the deadline would effectively kill the business model. Covington businessman Bay Ingram was on a mission to turn a profit in both events that summer. Shortly after his company, Southeast Recovery Group, received $300,000 from oil giant BP in what federal prosecutors have now said was a scam, Ingram wrote a check from his company to cover part of his personal investment in Cypress Pointe Surgical Hospital, according to court records filed in St. Tammany Parish last year. Ingram, 50, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a scheme submitting fake bills to BP for helicopter flights in the oil spill cleanup. He is the only conspirator to...