The Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program (HCFAC), an annual report jointly issued by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), can be helpful in predicting DOJ and HHS priorities for the coming year. In the FY 2022 HCFAC, DOJ and HHS not only highlighted a series of fraud and abuse enforcement wins, but also indicated increased activity by and with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the DOJ Consumer Protection Branch (CPB). This increase in activity from these regulatory agencies should be of interest to stakeholders in the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors.
Health Law Scan
Legal Insights and Perspectives for the Healthcare Industry
Continuing its recent slate of high-profile indictments, convictions, and plea agreements involving healthcare executives who have violated federal healthcare laws, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced charges against a healthcare executive for her role in a Medicare fraud scheme.
In the second blog post of our series on healthcare chief compliance officers and lawyers accused of “going bad,” we discuss Texas attorney Peter J. Bennett (licensed since 2007) who was charged in the Eastern District of Texas in February 2022 (and in a December 2022 superseding indictment) with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, and two counts of perjury in relation to an illegal kickback-for-referral scheme. Bennett was convicted of all counts after a five-day jury trial on July 14, 2023 and is now awaiting sentencing.
As we at Morgan Lewis pride ourselves on excellent client service, we feel it is our duty to provide critical dispatches from the romantic world of healthcare fraud. Specifically, we want to highlight developments in the District of Massachusetts that may make the prospects of an amicable breakup in a federal civil False Claims Act (FCA) case with Boston federal prosecutors more remote.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on June 8, 2023 that Steven King, a compliance executive of pharmacy holding company A1C Holdings LLC, was convicted of defrauding Medicare out of more than $50 million in a scheme involving dispensing medically unnecessary lidocaine and diabetic testing materials.