The Department of Justice recovered more than $5.6 billion in civil fraud settlements and judgments during fiscal year 2021, the department announced Tuesday. According to DOJ, this is the second largest annual total in False Claims Act history and the largest since 2014. Since the 1986 amendments to the FCA, DOJ has collected more than $70 billion.
As expected, healthcare settlements accounted for the majority of DOJ’s recoveries, with over $5 billion collected from healthcare entities. In many cases, the government recovered additional monies for state healthcare programs.
Notable recoveries included:
- $600 million to settle claims that Indivior plc promoted the opioid-addiction-treatment drug Suboxone to physicians who were writing prescriptions that were not for a medically accepted indication and were often diverted; and made false and misleading claims about the potential abuse of Suboxone.
- $2.8 billion to settle claims that Purdue Pharma promoted its opioid drugs to health care providers it knew were prescribing opioids for uses that were unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary, and paid kickbacks to induce prescriptions. Separately, shareholders and board members of Purdue agreed to pay $225 million to resolve civil False Claims Act allegations regarding the marketing of their drugs.
- $90 million to resolve claims that Sutter Health knowingly submitted unsupported diagnosis codes for certain patient encounters, resulting in inflated payments to be made to the Medicare Advantage Plans and Sutter Health.
- $160 million to resolve allegations that Arriva Medical LLC and Alere Inc. paid kickbacks to Medicare beneficiaries by providing them “free” or “no cost” diabetic testing glucometers and by routinely waiving or not making reasonable efforts to collect their copayments for glucometers and diabetic testing supplies. Alere Inc. and Alere San Diego Inc. also paid $38.75 million to resolve allegations that they billed, and caused others to bill, for defective rapid point-of-care testing devices used by Medicare beneficiaries to monitor blood coagulation when taking anticoagulant drugs.
DOJ also made significant recoveries in connection with procurement fraud, including:
- $50 million to resolve allegations that Navistar Defense LLC fraudulently induced the U.S. Marine Corps to enter into a contract modification at inflated prices for a suspension system for armored vehicles known as Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles.
- $25 million to settle claims that Insitu Inc. knowingly submitted materially false cost and pricing data for contracts with the U.S. Special Operations Command and the Department of the Navy to supply and operate Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
- $18.9 million to settle claims that Cognosante LLC used unqualified labor and overcharged the government for health care and IT services provided to federal agencies under two General Services Administration contracts.
- $12.7 million to resolve allegations that senior managers of Level 3 Communications LLC accepted kickbacks from two subcontractors in exchange for favorable treatment for those subcontractors on government contracts. The United States also alleged that Level 3 managers misstated compliance with woman-owned small business subcontracting requirements and knowingly obtained protected competitor bid information on the government contract to gain an advantage in bidding on task orders.
- $9 million to resolve claims that senior project managers at Schneider Electric Buildings Americas Inc. solicited kickbacks from subcontractors and that the company fraudulently charged the government for design costs by disguising those costs and spreading them across unrelated pricing components.
Source:
- Department of Justice: Justice Department’s False Claims Act Settlements and Judgments Exceed $5.6 Billion in Fiscal Year 2021
