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One of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, Biogen, Inc., and a large specialty pharmacy, Advanced Care Scripts, Inc. (ACS), will pay a combined $23.4 million to settle allegations under the Federal False Claims Act that kickbacks were used to induce the sale of drugs used to treat multiple sclerosis. Biogen will pay $22 million and ACS will pay $1.4 million.

The settlement was reached in United States of America ex rel. Paul Nee v. Biogen, Inc., et. al., 17-CV-10192-MLW, pending in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The complaint – filed by a whistleblower under the False Claims Act – alleged that Defendants profited from “engaging in a kickback scheme that uses it free drug program and so called financial assistance to charities as conduits to induce and steer” patients to the drugs Avonex and Tysabri, which are drugs reimbursed under the federal Medicare program….

Read the full press release here:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pharma-giant-and-speciality-pharmacy-settle-case-alleging-false-claims-violations-301195541.html?tc=eml_cleartime

Minnesota-based Medtronic USA Inc. has agreed to pay $9.2 million to resolve allegations that it violated the anti-kickback provision of the False Claims Act. The company was accused of illegally paying Wilson Asfora, M.D., a South Dakota neurosurgeon, to induce use of it’s SynchroMed II infusion pumps, which are implantable drug delivery devices. For a period of nine years, the lawsuit contends, Medtronic’s kickbacks were paid in the form of sponsoring hundreds of social gatherings hosted by Asfora at a restaurant which it knew he owned. Medtronic’s settlement also resolves it’s liability for failing to disclose that it sponsored events for Asfora, which qualifies as a transfer of value to a physician and therefore violates the CMS Open Payments Program.

Read more here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/medtronic-pay-over-92-million-settle-allegations-improper-payments-south-dakota-neurosurgeon