Whistleblower News From The Inside — July 15, 2015

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team Whistleblower’s phone call halts child-endangerment on set of Divergent movie sequel.  After a whistleblower’s frantic calls, union representatives stepped in to halt the shooting of chaotic scenes with child actors, some as young as four, scrambling through a gauntlet of 100+ untrained adult extras swinging metal clubs, axes and machetes.  Deadline. Nine defendants charged in scam involving complex, international stock manipulation and money laundering. ...

DOJ Enforcement Spotlight -- Cancer Doctor Farid Fata

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team Last Friday, the Department of Justice secured a 45-year prison sentence against the now infamous Detroit-area doctor, Farid Fata.  He was also ordered to forfeit $17.6 million of illegal reimbursements he obtained from Medicare and private insurance companies.  This stems from his guilty plea in September 2014 to violating the False Claims Act with a health care fraud scheme that included administering medically unnecessary...

Whistleblower News From The Inside — July 13, 2015

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team Prosecutors go after fraud at Veterans Affairs – One case involves a VA employee taking more than $1.2 million in kickbacks; another involves an employee who stole gravestones from a cemetery to floor his garage.  Washington Post Time to modernize the nursing home system – Officials intend to make sweeping changes to the rules that nursing homes must follow in order to receive payments...

Have We Reached the Final Round In the Government's Tuomey Kickback Case?

The United States won another round in its now almost eight year battle to hold South Carolina-based Tuomey Healthcare System liable for paying doctors illegal kickbacks.  The litigation has been long and procedurally complex, but at bottom, the Government has alleged, and the jury has found, that Tuomey gave a group of doctors unreasonably lucrative employment arrangements to get them to send their patients to Tuomey.  These sweetheart deals also...

In Their Own Words -- McCormack

-- “[Long term care facility] Administrators should be asking hard questions about any financial incentives the pharmacist or their employer may have to promote one drug over another,” McCormack told McKnight's on Tuesday. “Depending on the long-term care facility's financial and operational relationship with the outside pharmacy, there is some risk that the facility could be exposed to liability under the False Claims Act for violations of the Anti-kickback statute...

Whistleblower News from the Inside -- July 9, 2015

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team A third of UK businesses still haven’t heard of the Bribery Act -- A survey by the UK Government found that only two-thirds of small and medium sized businesses had heard of the 2010 Bribery Act, which imposes liability on companies for failure to prevent international bribery.  HM Government Omnicare will settle with DOJ in Depakote kickback case -- Omnicare announced it will settle with...

Whistleblower News from the Inside — July 1, 2015

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team SEC Announces Cherry-Picking Charges Against Investment Manager – The Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against a Wisconsin-based investment advisory firm and its owner accused of improperly allocating to his personal and business accounts certain options trades that appreciated in value during the course of a trading day while allocating to his clients other trades that depreciated in value.  SEC  U.S. Seeks $3.3...

Doctors Be Warned: DOJ Steps Up Enforcement of Anti-Kickback Law Against Individual Medical Professionals

The Department of Justice has recovered millions of dollars from hospitals, nursing homes, pharmaceutical companies and other medical providers through civil and criminal enforcement of the Anti-Kickback Law.  But the agency has begun paying increased attention to the doctors, nurses and administrative professionals on the receiving end of these bribes. The Anti-Kickback Law (42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b) makes it illegal to “knowingly and willfully offer[] or pay[]” or “solicit[] or...

Whistleblower News From The Inside — June 26, 2015

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team  Doctors accused of fraud were top earners -- Most of the doctors swept up in last week's national Medicare fraud takedown collected a lot more from Medicare than others in the same specialty, according to Medicare physician payment data for 2013.   Modern Healthcare Nurse pleads guilty to kickbacks -- A Connecticut pain clinic nurse has pleaded guilty to federal charges of accepting kickbacks from...

DOJ Gives Major Shoutout To Whistleblowers In $450M DaVita False Claims Act Settlement

By Gordon Schnell On Wednesday, Denver-based provider of dialysis services DaVita Healthcare Partners, Inc. agreed to pay $450 million to resolve charges it violated the False Claims Act by purposely creating and then billing the government for unnecessary waste in administering the drugs Zemplar and Venofer to dialysis patients.  DaVita is the largest provider of dialysis services in the US with dialysis clinics in 46 states and the District of Columbia. ...