Top Ten FCPA Recoveries of 2018

2018 saw substantial monetary settlements for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), which is the leading U.S. law barring bribery of foreign officials by companies subject to its reach.  Violations of the FCPA are investigated by DOJ as well as by the Securities and Exchange Commission.  The SEC has long recognized the FCPA as a high enforcement priority, and whistleblowers with knowledge of FCPA violations may be able...

December 20, 2018

Pain specialist Dr. Jonathan Daitch, a principal in Ft. Myers-based Advanced Pain Management Specialists, P.A., has agreed to pay more than $1.7 million to resolve allegations that he violated the False Claims Act.  Dr. Daitch caused Medicare and Tricare to be billed for medically-unnecessary urine drug testing performed at Advanced Pain's in-house laboratory.  In addition, Daitch received kickbacks for anesthesia services.  A co-owner of Advanced Pain, Dr. Michael Frey, previously...

December 19, 2018

Molecular Testing Labs, based in Vancouver, Washington, has agreed to settle claims that it violated the False Claims Act by paying local laboratories in exchange for referrals, in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute.  The amount of the settlement will be determined in ongoing litigation between Molecular Testing Labs and CMS, and could be between $180,000 and $1,777,738. USAO WDWA

December 17, 2018

Margarita Palomino, of Homestead, Florida, has been sentenced to over six years in prison for her part in a health care scheme which defrauded Medicare out of $4.65 million. The scheme involved three home health agencies that claimed to provide services to Medicare patients. Palomino, licensed as a physician in Cuba, but not in the United States, admitted that she provided home health care nursing visits and prepared the accompanying...

When a Gift is Not a Gift: Pharma Companies Use Charities to Increase Drug Profits

Imagine if at the end of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Ebenezer Scrooge announced that he was giving the prize turkey to the Cratchit family for Christmas dinner, but that this “gift” was conditional upon Bob Cratchit agreeing to work even longer hours in the new year, the turkey being cooked in a certain way, and only certain family members eating it. Would we consider Scrooge to have been truly...

Catch of the Week — Actelion Pharmaceticals

This week's Department of Justice "Catch of the Week" goes to Actelion Pharmaceuticals US, Inc., a California pharmaceutical company that sells various pulmonary arterial hypertension drugs, including Tracleer, Ventavis, Veletri, and Opsumit. Yesterday, Actelion agreed to pay $360 million to resolve allegations that it violated the Anti-Kickback Statute by indirectly paying drug copays for thousands of Medicare patients. It did so by donating to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which in...

December 4, 2018

In connection with fraud involving two medical devices, Covidien and ev3 Inc. have agreed to pay a total of $31 million to resolve allegations of violating the False Claims Act. According to whistleblower and former employee of Covidien, Jeffrey Faatz, sister company ev3 Inc.'s Onyx Liquid Embolic System was only FDA approved for use within the brain, but was allegedly being marketed to surgeons for use outside the brain. Furthermore,...

December 4, 2018

Medical device-maker LivaNova USA, Inc. has agreed to pay $1.87 million to resolve claims that it paid improper kickbacks to physicians who were among the largest referrers of patients for LivaNova's implanted epilepsy device.  The payments took the form of "speaking fees" for the doctors, although the doctors who received them were primarily speaking to their own staffs.  Ashley Case, a former employee of LivaNova, initiated the investigation by filing...

November 20, 2018

Gray Wesley Barrow, a doctor and co-owner of Louisiana Spine & Sports LLC, a pain management clinic in Baton Rouge, has pleaded guilty to receiving approximately $336,000 in unlawful kickbacks.  According to the plea, between 2014 and 2016 Barrow sent urine specimens collected from his patients to a drug testing laboratory that agreed to pay him a percentage of the reimbursements paid to the laboratory by health care benefit programs...

November 14, 2018

After pleading guilty last year, the owner of two health clinics in Detroit has been sentenced to 160 months in prison and ordered to pay over $6 million for defrauding Medicare. Along with multiple co-defendants, Jacklyn Price allegedly took part in a scheme to bill Medicare for services that were obtained through kickbacks, not medically necessary, not actually provided, or provided by an unlicensed practitioner. Her co-defendants, Millicent Traylor, Muhammad...