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.
The problem of counterfeit devices has perplexed the U.S. FDA for some time, given that the agency had previously been forced to send the illicit products back to the originator, only to see the same devices reenter the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that Keith Berman, formerly the CEO of Los Angeles-based Decision Diagnostics Corp., has received a prison sentence of seven years for misrepresenting the company’s developmental test for the SARS-CoV-2 virus during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With credit card fees taking a sizable bite of their billings, many U.S. health care providers are fighting back by offering patients cash discounts. But when a drug company covers card processing fees for its distributors to pass on to their provider clients so they can pay for so-called “buy-and-bill” Medicare Part B drugs with a credit card at cash prices, it’s fraud if those concessions aren’t figured into the drug’s average sales price – at least that’s what the U.S. Department of Justice is claiming in a complaint it released April 10 against Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Kevin Dills, who the U.S. SEC said secretly controlled Oncology Pharma Inc., consented to a final civil judgment in federal district court related to a fraudulent stock-selling scheme.
