On November 10, 2010, U.S. District Court Judge Maurice B. Cohill, Jr., of the Western District of Pennsylvania denied the defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment, thereby permitting the qui tam action by the doctors and U.S. Government to go forward.
On October 20, 2010, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (“HHS”) Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) announced guidelines enabling the barring of executives of pharmaceutical companies from contracting with U.S. Government health programs when they know, or if the OIG concludes they should have known, about Medicare fraud at their company.
On November 5, 2010, an engineering contractor, Louis Berger Group, Inc. (“LBG”), agreed to pay over $69 million to settle claims of defrauding the U.S. Government related to reconstruction contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. LBG is a New Jersey-based engineering consulting company which performed engineering contracts for the U.S. Department of Defense and United States Agency for International Development in Iraq and Afghanistan.
St. Joseph Medical Center has agreed to pay the United States $22 million to settle allegations under the False Claims Act that it paid unlawful remuneration under the Anti-Kickback Act and violated the Stark Law when it entered into a series of professional services contracts with MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates.
For more information see: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/November/10-civ-1271.
On October 26, 2010, the Washington State Investment Board announced that it will receive $11.7 million in a settlement with its former master custodian, State Street Bank.
On October 27, 2010, GlaxoSmithKline (“GSK”), the world’s fourth-largest pharmaceutical company by revenue, announced that it had finalized a settlement with the U.S.
Quicksort, Inc., Quicksort LA Inc., and Quicksort Sacramento Inc. have settled allegations of violating the False Claims Act and have agreed to pay the United States $4.2 million. The California-based companies were charged with misrepresenting the pre-sort level of mail submitted to the U.S. Postal Service from 2008 through 2010.
Four Miami-Dade healthcare operators have been charged with scheming to defraud Medicare out of a $200 million by fraudulently billing for mental health services. A whistleblower lawsuit was filed against American Therapeutic, the nation’s largest chain of community mental health centers licensed by Medicare. American Therapeutic and its senior employees were charged with scheming to bill Medicare for unnecessary group therapy sessions or sessions that never occurred.
Johnson & Johnson was required to pay $257.7 million to the state of Louisiana for wrongfully marketing the antipsychotic drug Risperdal. The case centered on claims that J&J and Ortho-McNeil Janssen sent correspondence letters in 2003 to 700,000 doctors which labeled Risperdal as safer then its competitors and minimized its links to diabetes.
Angelo R. Mozilo, founder and former chief executive of Countrywide Financial Corporation, and two others settled a $73 million deal with the SEC to avoid going to trial on allegations of fraud and insider trading. The SEC suit, filed in June 2009, alleged that Countrywide’s exposure to risky loans was misrepresented by the three men and also accused Mozilo of insider trading.
If you are aware of any person, corporation or entity that you think may be violating the Federal False Claims Act or a State False Claims Act, contact us today.