On December 14, 2022, the DOJ announced that a federal jury in the Southern District of Florida convicted a Georgia man for his role in a scheme to defraud Medicare by submitting over $463 million in genetic and other laboratory tests that patients did not need and that were procured through the payment of kickbacks.
On December 15, 2022, the DOJ announced that Ocenture LLC, headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, and its subsidiary, Carelumina LLC, agreed to pay $3 million to resolve allegations* they submitted false claims to Medicare by paying and receiving kickbacks in connection with genetic testing samples.
November 7, 2022 (Tampa, FL). The DOJ announced that a former Sarasota physician was sentenced to three years and six months in federal prison for conspiring to pay and receive kickbacks and bribes. Additionally, the former physician was ordered to forfeit $278,900, the proceeds of his offenses. On May 24, 2022, a federal jury found the former physician and another, of conspiring to pay and receive kickbacks and bribes, in the form of speaker fees, in return for prescribing the fentanyl spray, Subsys.
Tuesday, December 6, 2022, Miami. The USAO – Florida Southern, announced that nine Florida residents were arrested this morning by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after being charged by a federal grand jury in Miami with health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud. The fraud scheme allegedly involved tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent health care billing by 30 South Florida physical therapy clinics. The FBI Miami Field Office, investigated the case.
On September 2, 2022, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Bayer Corporation, and its related entities, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals Inc., Bayer HealthCare LLC and Bayer AG (collectively “Bayer”) agreed to pay $40 million to resolve alleged violations of the False Claims Act in connection with the drugs Trasylol, Avelox and Baycol. The Settlement Agreement can be found here. According to the DOJ, the settlement arose from two whistleblower lawsuits. The cases are captioned United States ex rel. Simpson v. Bayer Corp. Civ. No. 05-cv-3895 (D.N.J.), and United States… Read More »Bayer to Pay $40 Million to Resolve Alleged Use of Kickbacks and False Statements
The United States brought a two-count Complaint against Defendant, alleging that he violated the False Claims Act (“FCA”), 31 U.S.C. § 3729(a)(1)(A) (Count I), and conspired to violate the FCA, 31 U.S.C. § 3729(a)(1)(C) (Count II), by causing a pharmacy to file fraudulent claims with TRICARE, a federal health program. The Complaint alleges the pharmacy paid kickbacks to a marketing company, who in turn marketed compound medications to patients and then referred those patients to the pharmacy for fulfillment of the prescriptions for those medications.… Read More »Florida’s Middle District Denies Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss FCA Claims Filed by the United States; Complaint Satisfied Both Elements of the 11th Circuit’s Ruckh Proximate Cause Test
On Monday, August 2, 2021, the DOJ announced that Arriva Medical LLC (“Arriva”), a mail-order diabetic testing supplier, and its parent, Alere Inc. (“Alere”) have agreed to pay $160 million to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act. According to the July 2021 Settlement Agreement: -From 2009 until December 2017, Arriva was a Florida-based mail-order supplier of diabetic testing supplies to, amongst others, beneficiaries of the Medicare program. Arriva was founded in 2009 by David Wallace and Timothy Stocksdale, who, along with other… Read More »Mail-Order Diabetic Testing Supplier and Parent Company Agree to Pay $160 Million to Resolve Alleged False Claims to Medicare
On Tuesday, June 2, 2021, the DOJ (Southern District of Florida) issued a Press Release announcing that a former procurement director at Broward Health pled guilty to a federal conspiracy charge, admitting that he accepted kickbacks from vendors and a consultant in exchange for awarding them lucrative government contracts.
Today, Wednesday, May 26, 2021, the Department of Justice announced criminal charges against a telemedicine company executive, physician, marketers, and medical business owners for COVID-19 related fraud schemes. More specifically, the DOJ announced criminal charges against 14 defendants, including 11 newly-charged defendants and three who were charged in superseding indictments, in seven federal districts across the United States for their alleged participation in various health care fraud schemes that exploited the COVID-19 pandemic and resulted in over $143 million in false billings. Included in those… Read More »DOJ Announces Coordinated Law Enforcement Action to Combat Health Care Fraud Related to COVID-19, Including Two South Florida Kickback Schemes
On May 19, 2021, the Department of Justice (Eastern District of Pennsylvania) announced in a PRESS RELEASE that Medicrea International, a French medical device manufacturer, and its American affiliate Medicrea USA Inc., agreed to pay: $1 Million to the United States and participating states to resolve civil whistleblower allegations that the companies, by entertaining U.S.-based physicians during a 2013 conference in France, violated the Anti-Kickback Statute and, through resulting claims to federal healthcare programs, the False Claims Act and similar state statutes; and an additional… Read More »French Medical Device Manufacturer to Pay $2 Million in a Civil Settlement to Resolve Kickbacks to Physicians and Related Medicare Open Payments Program Violations