It was the 3rd of September 2003 when Medical Manager CEO Michael Singer received a panic call from his division’s attorney. The FBI was raiding his R&D facility, along with several other locations across WebMD, a publicly listed company in the field of health information services. The FBI confiscated 1.2 million email messages, 1,500 boxes of files with more than 3 million pages of documents, and 830,000 computer files.
A few weeks later the reason for the FBI-inquiry became clear. It turned out an employee, who was internally investigated for taking dealer kickbacks, had informed the authorities about his dealings, alleging the company board was fully aware of these illegal affairs. He was hoping to cut a deal for himself.
Despite Michael Singer’s career as the CEO of a division with more than 2,500 employees, he lived a quiet, spiritual life in “the woods” where he moved in his early twenties to learn “how to quiet the voice in his head.” All his life, he had been practicing “how to surrender” and create “inner peace.” This federal investigation offered a massive challenge to his inner peace. If things turned out badly, he might end up in prison.
