August 30, 2026 – SAN DIEGO, CA – A skin cancer testing company formerly known as DermTech Inc., which was headquartered in San Diego, has agreed to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by knowingly submitting false claims for unreliable skin cancer tests to the Medicare program. DermTech is now
liquidating as DTech Liquidating Inc. after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the District of Delaware in June 2024. As part of the resolution announced on Wednesday, the United States received an Allowed Class Three General Unsecured Claim of $5,038,011 in the bankruptcy proceeding.
Image by Ray Shrewsberry • Ray_Shrewsberry from Pixabay
The settlement resolves allegations that DermTech submitted claims to Medicare for skin cancer tests despite knowing the tests had quality control issues. First, from October 2022 to March 2023, DermTech billed Medicare for skin cancer tests that it conducted after switching to an unvalidated positive control range for one of the test’s two key melanoma markers. Without a validated positive control range, it is impossible to confirm that the positive control is working and thus impossible to verify whether the test results are accurate. Second, from January 2020 to February 2022, DermTech billed Medicare for skin cancer tests that did not contain enough patient RNA to be tested but still generated positive or negative test results. For both categories of tests, DermTech reported results to patients. When concerns were raised...
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