U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright this week affirmed a judgment against Cameron-Ehlen Group Inc and its owner Paul Ehlen in the amount of $487,048,705.
According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Minnesota, the group, which does business as Precision Lenses, owed just over $489.5 million in penalties and damages for allegedly providing kickbacks to physicians.
Precision is accused of providing luxury travel, and sports and theater tickets over the course of a decade to ophthalmologists who promised to buy medical supplies from the company, according to the court release. Supplies were used in cataract operations and other procedures covered by Medicare.
Earlier this year, a federal civil jury concluded that the defendants violated the False Claims Act and the Anti-Kickback Statute by paying kickbacks to ophthalmic surgeons to induce their use of the Defendants’ products in cataract surgeries reimbursed by Medicare. Ehlen appealed that decision.
Moreover, the jury found that 64,575 false claims were submitted to Medicare due to the defendants’ conduct, which resulted in $43,694,641.71 in damages to Medicare.
Under the False Claims Act (FCA), a person or entity found to have violated the FCA is liable to the United States Government for a minimum civil penalty of $5,000 per false claim and three times the amount of damages sustained by the Government. In this matter, the amount included $358,445,780 in statutory penalties and an additional...
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