Whistleblower Group

June 18, 2014

Lizette Garcia, a former office worker at Anna Nursing Services Corp., a now defunct Miami home health care company, pleaded guilty in connection with a $7M health care fraud scheme under which Anna Nursing paid kickbacks and bribes to patient recruiters in return for providing patients to Anna Nursing for home health care and therapy services that were medically unnecessary or never provided. DOJ

June 17, 2014

The Justice Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and virtually every state attorney general in the country, reached a $968M settlement with SunTrust Mortgage Inc., the mortgage lending arm of SunTrust Bank, to resolve charges of mortgage origination, servicing, and foreclosure abuses.Whistleblower Insider

June 13, 2014

Gwendolyn Climmons-Johnson, the owner and operator of Urgent Response EMS, a Houston area ambulance company, was sentenced to 97 months in prison and to pay roughly $1M for her role in a $2.4M Medicare fraud scheme. In October she had been convicted by a federal jury in Houston of four counts of health care fraud. According to evidence presented at trial, from January 2010 through December 2011, Climmons-Johnson and others conspired to enrich themselves by submitting false and fraudulent claims to Medicare for ambulance services that were medically unnecessary and/or not provided. DOJ

June 3, 2014

Iowa-based egg producer Quality Egg pleaded guilty to, and agreed to a $6.8M fine for, bribing USDA food safety inspectors and violating food safety rules which ultimately led to a nationwide salmonella outbreak in 2010. If accepted by the court, it will be one of the largest payments ever made related to food safety. Quality Egg’s owner, Jack DeCoster, and his son Peter, also pleaded guilty to one count of introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce. Whistleblower Insider

June 2, 2014

A federal jury convicted Michael Baker and Michael Gluk, the former CEO and former CFO of Texas-based medical device manufacturers ArthroCare Corp., for orchestrating a fraud scheme that resulted in shareholder losses of over $400M. Evidence at trial demonstrated that Baker and Gluk masterminded a scheme to artificially inflate sales and revenue through a series of end-of-quarter transactions involving several of ArthroCare’s distributors beginning in 2005 and continuing until 2009. Baker, Gluk and other ArthroCare employees determined the type and amount of product to be shipped to distributors based on ArthroCare’s need to meet Wall Street analyst forecasts, rather than distributors’ actual orders. ArthroCare then reported these shipments as sales enabling the company to meet or exceed internal and external earnings forecasts. DOJ

May 28, 2014

Kentucky-based hospital King’s Daughters Medical Center agreed to pay $40.9M to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by submitting false claims to the Medicare and Kentucky Medicaid programs for medically unnecessary coronary stents and diagnostic catheterizations. The government also alleged that several King’s Daughters physicians falsified medical records to justify these unnecessary cardiac procedures. Whistleblower Insider

May 22, 2014

An owner and operator of community mental health centers in Baton Rouge as well as a patient recruiter for a related facility in Houston were convicted for their roles in a $258M Medicare fraud scheme involving three facilities that filed fraudulent claims for psychiatric services that were unnecessary or never actually provided. The ongoing investigation into these three community mental health centers — Shifa Community Mental Health Center, Serenity Center and Shifa Community Mental Health Center — has so far resulted in the convictions of 17 employees of these facilities, including therapists, marketers, administrators, owners and the medical director. DOJ

May 22, 2014

Zahir Yousafzai, the co-owner or operator of four Detroit-area home health agencies involved in a $13.8M Medicare fraud scheme was sentenced to serve 72 months in prison and pay $4.1M in restitution. According to court records, Yousafzai and his co-conspirators paid and directed the payment of various medical professionals, including doctors, nurses, physical therapists and physical therapist assistants, to create fictitious patient files to document purported home health services that were never provided. The healthcare companies involved included First Care Home Health Care, Moonlite Home Care, Physicians Choice Home Health Care and Quantum Home Care. DOJ

May 20, 2014

The DOJ announced it will require ConAgra Foods, Cargill, CHS Inc., and Horizon Milling to divest four competitively significant flour mills in order to proceed with the formation of Ardent Mills, a flour milling joint venture. The government said the divestitures are necessary to preserve flour milling competition in four regions of the country encompassing large cities such as Los Angeles, Dallas, Minneapolis and the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area, resulting in more competitive prices for wheat flour purchasers and ultimately lower prices for consumers who purchase wheat flour-based products, such as bread, cookies and crackers. DOJ

May 19, 2014

Credit Suisse pled guilty to criminal charges of conspiring to help thousands of US taxpayers evade taxes and agreed to pay fines and restitution amounting to $2.6 billion. It is the first big bank to plead guilty to illegal activity since Drexel Burnham Lambert in 1989. Whistleblower Insider