Have a Claim?

Click here for a confidential contact or call:

1-212-350-2774

Whistleblower News From The Inside — January 11, 2016

Posted  January 11, 2016

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team

Former Owner of Bostwick Laboratories Agrees to Pay Up to $3.75 Million to Resolve Allegations of Unnecessary Testing and Illegal Remuneration to Physicians — The settlement resolves claims that, from 2006 to 2011, Dr. David Bostwick allegedly directed Bostwick Laboratories to bill Medicare and Medicaid for expensive cancer detection tests that were not medically necessary and were performed without the treating physicians’ consent or order.  The settlement also resolves allegations that Dr. Bostwick, through Bostwick Laboratories, offered various discounts and billing arrangements to treating physicians to induce physicians to refer business to Bostwick Laboratories in violation of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute.  Bostwick Laboratories previously settled for over $6.5 million.  The claims were originally brought by whistleblower Michael Daugherty under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act; Daugherty will receive over $2.5 million from the government’s settlements with Dr. Bostwick and Bostwick Laboratories.  DOJ

President of Miami-Based Transportation Company Convicted in $70 Million Health Care Fraud Scheme — Damian Mayol of Miami was convicted after trial of one count of conspiracy to pay health care kickbacks. According to evidence presented at trial, Mayol and his co-conspirators used Transportation Service Providers, Inc. to coordinate the payment of illegal health care kickbacks to recruiters, who in return referred patients to three now-defunct clinics in the Miami area.  The clinics in turn billed Medicare for services that were not medically necessary or not provided to patients, falsifying patient records, including group therapy session notes, to support claims for reimbursement from Medicare. DOJ

Man sentenced to 20 years for biodiesel fraud scheme — Joseph Furando was convicted for his role in an elaborate scheme to defraud biodiesel buyers and United States taxpayers by fraudulently selling biodiesel incentives.  Biodiesel is eligible for tax credits and incentives that can be claimed once and only once for any given volume of biodiesel.  Furando and his companies devised a scheme to purchase biodiesel on which the one-time credits had already been claimed, and re-sell it as “new” biodiesel on which purchasers could claim the credits.  Because the incentives had already been claimed on the biodiesel purchased, it was sometimes more than two dollars per gallon less than biodiesel that was still eligible for the credits.  DOJ

Whistleblower suit alleges OptumHealth profited from false claims — In a recently unsealed case, whistleblower Karen Clark, alleges that supervisors at OptumHealth looked the other way when nine behavioral health providers submitted false Medicaid claims over a 19-month period, and then they fired her for reporting the suspected fraud to law enforcement.  New Mexican

Whistleblower retaliation suit against adult treatment program provider to proceed to trial — A counselor at the Oregon program, OnTrack, claims to have been fired after reporting alleged sexual abuse of clients to law enforcement.  Mail Tribune

Utah claim alleges retaliation — A former Utah Transit Authority official says he was fired for warning the agency that it was violating federal safety rules, and bosses overrode those alerts in an attempt to help create positive publicity before an upcoming vote to raise transit taxes. Tribune

NM whistleblower suit alleges law firm retained by state had conflicts of interest — The law firm, Day Pitney LLC, had been hired by the state to recover state investment funds lost.  The suit alleges that when the law firm failed to disclose that it represented several large companies from which the state was seeking to recover money. This, the suit claims, translates to serious conflicts of interest that may have cost the state millions in unrecovered funds from Wall Street firms. New Mexican

The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare — In 1998, attorney Rob Bilott, who ordinarily represented chemical companies, took on the case of some cattle farmers next door to a DuPont facility, in part because they knew his grandmother.  Nearly 20 years later, he continues to represent parties seeking redress for DuPont’s role in pollution from perfluorooctanoic acid, known as PFOA.  NYT