In a revealing confession he writes from a federal prison camp where he's serving a 5-year sentence for his role in a $750-million accounting fraud, David Applegate walks you through an elaborate ruse to ship surgical devices to distributors around the country based on Wall Street analyst forecasts rather than on actual orders. Read the full story in Outpatient Surgery Magazine's "Breaking Bad."

While vice president of the ArthroCare's spine unit, Mr. Applegate says the company fraudulently reported the transactions as sales. In reality, ArthoCare was simply "parking" its surgical devices at distributors at the end of the quarter in order to meet or exceed earnings forecasts. Distributors agreed to accept the shipments in exchange for cash commissions, the ability to return the products and other incentives.

"I know what I did was wrong and I accept full responsibility for my actions," writes Mr. Applegate. "But the reality is that I did not make any money from this fraud. Usually greed is the motivation in these types of cases, but it was not for me. So what happened that made me go off the rails this one time?"

Dan O'Connor