SAN FRANCISCO — After years of investigation, three consecutive sets of defense lawyers and several weeks of trial, a jury found former InterMune Inc. CEO W. Scott Harkonen guilty Tuesday in a high-profile health care fraud case.
The government secured a conviction on one felony wire fraud count, while Harkonen was acquitted on a second misbranding charge. However, the fraud conviction carries far greater sentencing exposure than does the misbranding: a maximum of 20 years for the former, compared to three years on the latter (though Harkonen’s actual sentence will likely be far less than two decades).
