Archive

January 26, 2017

New Jersey filed two separate actions against home improvement companies and their owners alleging they used deceptive business practices in order to obtain $1.4 million in federal relief funds from 51 homeowners who paid them to repair and elevate their storm-damaged properties. Named in the first Complaint are father and son contractors Paul Zaidinski, Sr., and Paul Zaidinski, Jr., and their Point Pleasant-based company, Shore HL, Inc., which does business as “Shore House Lifters.” Named in the second Complaint are contractor George Rex and his Pleasantville-based companies, Atlantic Coast Housing Lifting, LLC and George Rex Construction, LLC. The defendants engaged in “unconscionable consumer practices” that include taking money from consumers to renovate, rebuild, and/or elevate Sandy-damaged homes and then failing to begin work, performing the work in a substandard manner, and/or abandoning unfinished projects without returning for weeks, months, or at all, according to the State’s Complaints. NJ

November 21, 2016

Pennsylvania announced the filing of criminal charges against 50 individuals following investigations by the Office of Attorney General’s Insurance Fraud Section. The charges are part of a November sweep conducted by the Insurance Fraud Section, which is the largest law enforcement entity in Pennsylvania with specific authority to investigate and prosecute cases of insurance fraud. The total potential fraud involved in these cases is more than $1.1 million. The charges announced involve some of the most common types of insurance fraud. PA

July 18, 2016

Bristol-Myers Squibb agreed to a $30 million settlement to resolve allegations of unlawful kickbacks to physicians in the marketing of Pravachol and other drugs.  The claims were made in a whistleblower suit filed under the California Insurance Frauds Prevention Act by three former Bristol-Myers sales representatives, who will receive a share of the settlement.  CA

January 27, 2016

Milton Russ Barnhill was sentenced to 11 years in prison for conspiring with others to defraud the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation and the Farm Service Agency, both agencies of the United States, in connection with federal crop insurance claims and other federal taxpayer subsidies.  As charged, Barnhill produced crops which he sold in the names of others which he then reported on insurance claims that the crops were lost due to natural disasters.  He also placed crops and insurance policies into the names of conspirators to boost the amount of money he could collect on the insurance claims.  DOJ (EDNC)

March 23, 2015

California-based Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Allianz SE, agreed to pay $44 million to settle allegations it violated the False Claims Act by issuing insurance policies that were ineligible under the US Department of Agriculture’s federal crop insurance program and falsifying documents in support of the improper issuances.  DOJ