Friday, May 27, 2005

Mayo Clinic Settles Whistleblower Suit

The Mayo Clinic has agreed to pay $6.5 million to settle charges that it misspent millions of dollars in federal research grants, according to a story in yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The Rochester-based clinic denied any wrongdoing in the case, which was triggered by a whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2002 by a former employee. The whistleblower, Christine Long, will receive $1.3 million in the settlement. She was a former accounting assistant in Mayo’s research grant office who accused the clinic of violating the federal False Claims Act by charging the government for unrelated research grant expenses. The federal government then launched its own investigation.

For the full story, click here.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Four Whistle-Blowers Divide $250,000 In Case Involving Illegal Oil Dumping at Sea

The U.S. Department of Justice announced May 20 that it had presented $250,000 to four Filipino seamen who informed authorities about the illegal dumping of oil waste along the California coast from a Maltese-flagged cargo ship named M/V Katerina.

According to the account of the payment in BNA’s Daily Environment Report, Jonathan Sanchez, Jimmy Piamonte, Florencio Tolentino, and Richard Santillan received the cash awards at a ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines. The U.S. attorney for the Central District of California said Sanchez, Piamonte, and Tolentino received $75,000 each and Santillan received $25,000.

In August 2004, the four men told U.S. Coast Guard officials in Los Angeles about a pipe the Katerina crew used to illegally discharge oil waste into the ocean.

International and federal environmental laws prohibit the discharge of the oil waste and require ships to use anti-pollution equipment to separate oil from waste water. According to statements by the four men, the Coast Guard learned that the Athens-based owner of the ship, DST Shipping Inc., and the ship’s captain instructed crew to use the bypass pipe to discharge the waste and then hide the pipe while in port.

The information resulted in criminal charges being filed against the company and the captain, chief engineer, and one other crew member.

Each of the defendants negotiated plea agreements with federal prosecutors and admitted they had instructed crew to use the bypass pipe and that they had concealed the illegal activity from authorities. They pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and at hearings held in March and April were sentenced to eight months in prison.

The company also entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors. It admitted the Katerina crew had dumped oil waste into the ocean several times over a six-month period in 2004 and pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.

At a March 2 hearing in federal court in Los Angeles, DST Shipping was ordered to pay $1 million and sentenced to four years of probation.

Monday, May 23, 2005

Man Gets $1M for Blowing the Whistle on Medical Billings

A former medical-practice administrator will collect more than $1 million in whistleblower fees after helping the government recover almost $3.8 million in billings to Medicare and Medicaid. The Resurgens Surgery Center, an orthopedic outpatient surgical clinic on the campus of St. Joseph’s Hospital of Atlanta, agreed on May 16 to repay the federal government $2.5 million in Medicare and Medicaid fees it collected. Read the full account in the Fulton County Daily Report here. (Registration required.)

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Former Asphalt Exec Pleads Guilty to Overbilling on Illinois Projects

An Illinois road builder agreed Tuesday to pay $500,000 to the federal government and one of the firm’s former officers pleaded guilty to mail fraud for overbilling on asphalt products delivered to federally funded state projects. The firm, Curran Contracting Inc. of Crystal Lake, has been under investigation for four years as a result of a former employee who filed a whistleblower lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

As part of the lawsuit, the firm paid the state a $750,000 settlement in 2002 for overbilling the state on Chicago-area resurfacing projects.  For the complete story, click here.

Lawsuit Claims Cancer Doctors Filed Fraudulent Bills with US Government

A former administrator of the largest practice for cancer treatment in Southwest Virginia has filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the practice and some of the doctors who work there, alleging that they submitted false claims to the federal government, according to a story in the Roanoke Times today.

Timothy Callahan filed a lawsuit against Oncology and Hematology Associates of Southwest Virginia, eight of the doctors who work there and two related companies in April 2000 under the federal False Claims Act, according to court documents unsealed in federal court. A federal judge unsealed a handful of the documents in the case in November 2004. But it is not clear when those documents were made available to the public through the court’s electronic filing system. Click here for the full story.

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