Category: State False Claims Acts
On May 3, 2012, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee announced that a number of dialysis centers in the Knoxville, Tennessee area had agreed to pay $4.36 million to resolve allegations that they had violated the federal False Claims Act, the Tennessee Medicaid False Claims Act and other federal and state laws and regulations.
On Thursday, Sprint Nextel Corp., the third largest mobile service provider in the United States, was sued by the state of New York for over $300 million for allegations of tax fraud. The State of New York claimed that Sprint intentionally decided not to collect or pay taxes, worth millions of dollars,
Kentucky’s Speaker of its House of Representatives, Greg Stumbo, announced that he was introducing false claims act legislation to give whistleblowers strong tools and incentives to expose misuse of state dollars. Stumbo supported his legislation by pointing to other states, such as California and Texas, that have successfully prosecuted cases under their own false claims acts.
Influential in Securing House passage of the False Claims Act Amendments of 1986, Representative Howard Berman joins in the commemoration of its 25th anniversary. Since the False Claims Act was amended, the government has recovered over $30 billion in settlements and judgments in civil cases involving fraud against the government.
Taxpayers Against Fraud foresees more than $9 billion in False Claims Act recoveries, “…counting civil, state and criminal fines – is within the realm of possible for FY 2012,” stated Patrick Burns of TAF. The cases settled or lined up for settlement included: Merck ($950 million); GlaxoSmithKline ($3 billion); Abbott ($1.5 billion);
Merck & Co, Inc., the second largest drug manufacturer in the nation, agreed to pay $24 million to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to settle allegations that it knowingly reported inflated drug prices to the Massachusetts Medicaid program. The $24 million settlement is the largest single payment made to the Commonwealth for any one Medicaid fraud case in the state’s history,
KV Pharmaceutical Company, the St. Louis parent corporation of the now defunct Ethex Corporation, has agreed to pay $17 million to the federal and state governments to resolve allegations that Ethex fraudulently received reimbursement for two of its drugs from federal healthcare programs. According to allegations made by relator Constance Conrad in U.S.
In an excellent op-ed piece written for the Lehigh Valley’s Morning Call, David Williams of Kline & Specter describes why Pennsylvania needs a False Claims Act to combat fraud against the state. Citing a 2005 study by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office, Williams notes that fraudulent activities have consumed more than ten percent of Pennsylvania’s healthcare costs.
New York City has agreed to pay the federal government $70 million to settle claims that it allegedly overbilled Medicaid by improperly approving home care for elderly clients. As part of the settlement, NYC admitted that it reauthorized treatment of a number of patients without having first obtained required assessments from doctors,
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana announced on October 19, 2011, that Premier Home Care, a durable medical equipment provider in Southern Indiana, had agreed to pay $600,000 to the United States and to the State of Indiana for violations of the False Claims Act. This qui tam suit was filed in 2008 by a former Premier employee who alleged that the company violated the False Claims Act by falsely certifying its compliance with state licensing requirements when it used unlicensed personnel to set up respiratory ventilation machines for patients.
