Former American Registry of Pathology Director Sentenced for Money Laundering

According to GuideStar.org, The American Registry of Pathology (ARP) was founded in 1921 and chartered by the United States congress in 1976 to serve the American people as a focus for the interchange of knowledge between military and civilian medicine and science. Their mission is 3-fold: (1) provide leading-edge medical, scientific, professional, and adminisrative services to public and private sector organizations, (2) publish authoritative reference at lases to aid in the diagnosis of disease, and (3) establish and maintain registries of pathology.

Having trained in part at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) while I was a resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, at a time when both those facilities existed on the same campus, my understanding of the ARP was that is was an organization established and perhaps by its congressional charter in 1976, provide a mechanism for AFIP to bill and collect revenues for the AFIP and other ARP missions, specifically, pathology consultations, the AFIP fascicles, AFIP courses and more. I seem to recall Senator Edward Kennedy being referenced in respect to this charter to provide a mechanism for a government agency to collect revenues outside of direct taxation or licensing/regulatory/compliance-type mechanisms.

Civilian contributors, as I understand it, would have technical and professional services performed at AFIP billed through the ARP which was also to handle any collections.  The ARP also oversaw and could market, advertise and distribute the AFIP tumor and non-tumor fascicles for a price through their business operations.  ARP booths were prevalent at trade show meetings to sell the fascicles amongst other publications and promote the consultative services of AFIP.

It was never clear to me how successful the ARP was or perhaps could have been at being a more successful operation but it seems to not be so good now.  Last week on Friday, its former director was sentenced to four years in prison for stealing more than $2 million from ARP. According to a Washington Post article, Michael Parry, 59, admitted that from February 2010 through April 2014, he transferred money between organization accounts. He pretended that the transfers related to medical studies and grants, including for fictional research fellowships. Parry then moved the money into his account, according to a plea agreement.

The story mentions Parry paid back the monies that were transferred and then some.