More than five years after pleading guilty to its role in the opioid epidemic, Purdue Pharma LP was sentenced in federal court and ordered to pay $5 billion in criminal penalties.
Patrick Cassells, of Fulshear, Texas, was sentenced March 6 to more than seven years in prison and ordered to pay more than $25 million in restitution and forfeiture after he pleaded guilty nearly two years ago to one count of health care fraud that involved the three durable medical equipment companies he owned and operated.
The U.S. Department of Justice reported that it has indicted two executives with Zynex Inc. for Medicare fraud, but in one of the stranger twists in recent fraud cases, one of the executives allegedly attempted to interfere with the personal lives of members of the media who were reporting on the company’s legal problems.
Six individuals, including an investment banker, face multiple U.S. charges stemming from an alleged $41 million insider-trading scheme, plus stock manipulation schemes involving biopharma companies. The charges are related to three overlapping securities fraud schemes that occurred between June 2020 and February 2024.
The U.S. Department of Justice reported June 30 that several hundred defendants were charged with health care fraud of more than $14 billion, but the more important news may be that federal agencies are standing up a data sharing system that will make this kind of enforcement more effective.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it obtained a judgment for a total of $17 million in penalties and disgorgement from a group of individuals and entities charged with investor fraud.
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.
Nearly three years after being terminated as president and CEO of Cytodyn Inc., Nader Pourhassan was convicted June 9 by a U.S. federal jury for his role in a securities fraud scheme to deceive investors about the Vancouver, Wash.-based company’s development of leronlimab. The jury also convicted Kazem Kazempour, the CEO of Amarex Clinical Research LLC, a contract research organization hired by Cytodyn, for his part in the scheme.
The U.S. SEC filed charges against David Banister and The Market Analysts Group LLC, which Banister controls, alleging that they conducted a fraudulent scheme to promote long-term investment in Biovie Inc. without disclosing that Banister was actively selling his own shares in the biopharma company.
A proposed rule to implement the five-year-old Medicaid Services Investment and Accountability Act would expand the U.S. Health and Human Services’ (HHS) permissive exclusion authority to biopharma manufacturers that misclassify outpatient drugs supplied under agreements with federal health care programs.
