A Chilton Medical Center employee was arrested last week for allegedly stealing hospital beds from a hospital previously under the same operators as CMC.

Scott Duane Cheek was arrested on Aug. 22 by Hempstead County (Ark.) Sheriff’s Department officers with the help of Clanton Police. Cheek is being held in Chilton County Jail awaiting extradition to Arkansas to answer charges that–while he was serving as maintenance supervisor at CMC and Medical Park Hospital in Hope, Ark.–he ordered beds be transferred to the Clanton hospital and that Medical Park never received payment.

James Cheek, former president of Carraway Medical Systems, LLC, and Herschel Breig, former Carraway executive vice president, are serving five-year prison sentences after being found guilty of hiding about $5 million that should have been paid to cover employee payroll taxes at a hospital in Lubbock, Texas.

Upon James Cheek’s imprisonment, his brother, Ted Cheek, was named president of Carraway. He works out of an office across from CMC off Lay Dam Road.

Scott Cheek, who was arrested at the Clanton hospital last week, is the nephew of James Cheek and Ted Cheek.

A subsidiary of Carraway leased CMC from Sunlink Health Systems out of Atlanta in March 2011. The agreement gave Carraway the option to buy CMC during the six-year term of the lease.

Chilton Medical Center Executive Director Ted Chapin was hired at the hospital in September 2011, after Scott Cheek had come on board and the beds in question were already installed.

Chapin said he was “surprised” by law enforcement officers claiming there were stolen beds in the hospital because Chapin had receipts showing CMC paid about $125,000 for the beds.

“It’s not unusual for there to be inter-company trades for equipment, and we had the paperwork to verify that we had paid for the beds,” Chapin said.