Whistleblower News from the Inside -- December 18, 2015

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team

Drug C.E.O. Martin Shkreli arrested on fraud charges — Famous for acquiring a decades-old drug used to treat an infection that can be devastating for babies and people with AIDS and, overnight, raising the price to $750 a pill from $13.50, his criminal charges brought against him actually relate to something else entirely — his time as a hedge fund manager and when he ran his first biopharmaceutical company, Retrophin.  NYT

32 hospitals to pay more than $28m to resolve FCA allegations related to Kyphoplasty billing — Thirty-two hospitals located throughout 15 states have agreed to pay the U.S. a total of more than $28 million to settle allegations that the health care facilities submitted false claims to Medicare for minimally-invasive kyphoplasty procedures by billing on a more costly inpatient rather than an outpatient basis.  DOJ

21st Century Oncology Holdings Inc. agrees to pay $19m to settle Medicare billing probe — 21st Century urologists allegedly had a financial incentive to order unnecessary bladder cancer tests because a portion of their bonuses were linked to the volume of tests the company’s in-house lab performed. During the five years, four urologists earned more than $1 million each in bonuses tied to the test.  WSJ

CFTC orders JPMorgan Chase to pay $100m for failure to disclose conflicts of interest — The CFTC issued an order filing and settling charges against JPMorgan Chase Bank finding that it failed to disclose certain conflicts of interest relating to certain commodity pools or exempt pools to clients of its U.S.-based wealth management business, J.P. Morgan Private Bank.  CFTC    

Splint supplier and its president to pay over $10m to resolve FCA allegations — Maryland-based splint supplier Dynasplint Systems Inc., and its founder and president, George Hepburn, have agreed to pay approximately $10.3 million to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by improperly billing Medicare for splints provided to patients in skilled nursing facilities.   DOJ

Whistleblower to receive $750K after jury’s decision — A whistleblower is set to receive $750,000 after reporting that a water quality improvement project was actually a million-dollar oil-and-gas access canal project that benefited a family of landowners along the bayou.   ABC