Nader Pourhassan, the former president and CEO of Cytodyn Inc., was sentenced Jan. 23 to 30 months in prison for his role in a securities fraud scheme to deceive investors about the Vancouver, Wash.-based company’s development of leronlimab as a treatment for HIV and COVID-19.
Once again, U.S. legislative reforms to rein in pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) business practices missed a ride to finally becoming law. This time, they were kicked out of the Trump administration’s budget reconciliation bill that was signed into law July 4. House Resolution 1, as first passed in the lower chamber, included a few PBM reforms, but they were deleted from the Senate version that ultimately became law because the parliamentarian ruled they didn’t meet the restrictions placed on reconciliation measures.
A former board member of Chinook Therapeutics Inc. and four others were charged May 22 in a 19-count indictment stemming from an alleged insider trading scheme that produced more than $600,000 in profits after the June 2023 announcement that Novartis AG was acquiring the Seattle-based Chinook in a $3.5 billion deal.
In another real-life episode of “sponsor beware,” the owners of a clinical research facility pleaded guilty March 10 in U.S. district court to fraud charges resulting from their conduct of two clinical trials for potential asthma drugs.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been exceptionally active in the mergers and acquisitions space for the past 18 months, but Congress might soon amplify these agencies’ ability to suppress these transactions. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who chairs the competition subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a recent hearing that vertical mergers have flown largely off the enforcement radar, a problem that Congress could address by several means, including by providing the FTC with a heftier budget to pursue these cases.
Advocates are pressing the U.S. Congress to pass legislation to require more Medicare coverage of telehealth and telemedicine, but the Office of Inspector General (OIG) continues to report instances of fraud in this area. OIG reported July 24 that government attorneys had forced a guilty plea out of a telemedicine provider who has agreed to pay $44 million to deal with charges of fraud perpetrated over a period of three and a half years.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been exceptionally active in the mergers and acquisitions space for the past 18 months, but Congress might soon amplify these agencies’ ability to suppress these transactions. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who chairs the competition subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a recent hearing that vertical mergers have flown largely off the enforcement radar, a problem that Congress could address by several means, including by providing the FTC with a heftier budget to pursue these cases.
The U.S. Office of Inspector General (OIG) reported June 28 that it had launched a series of enforcement actions against perpetrators of a variety of forms of health care fraud, including in the areas of telemedicine and opioid abuse. The 78 individuals arraigned in this crackdown are said to be responsible for $2.5 billion.
The False Claims Act is perhaps the primary vehicle for U.S. federal authorities to extract penalties and fines from life science companies for violations of the law, but a new report by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP suggests a mixed signal. The report notes that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recovered $2.2 billion via the FCA last year, but while that is not a conspicuous number for the past decade plus, what was conspicuous was that those sums were recovered by the second highest level of FCA actions settlement in the history of the FCA, suggesting that DOJ is keen on enforcement with no regard to the size of the target.
The False Claims Act (FCA) is perhaps the primary vehicle for U.S. federal authorities to extract penalties and fines from life science companies for violations of the law, but a new report by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP suggests a mixed signal. The report notes that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recovered $2.2 billion via the FCA last year, but while that is not a conspicuous number for the past decade plus, what was conspicuous was that those sums were recovered by the second highest level of FCA actions settlement in the history of the FCA, suggesting that DOJ is keen on enforcement with no regard to the size of the target.
