Two whistleblowers from Florence, South Carolina have settled their 10-year lawsuit against Laboratory Corporation of America (Labcorp) for $19 million, announced Pittsburgh-based law firm Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Basick & Raspanti.

Scarlett Lutz, owner of a medical billing services company, and Kayla Webster, a nurse working for a local family practitioner, alleged that Labcorp had participated in a complex health care fraud scheme to violate the False Claims Act by providing blood draws to their health care provider customers, who were receiving cash kickbacks from two other labs named in the suit.

“These whistleblowers are hard-working people from a small town in South Carolina, not highly paid laboratory-industry executives,” attorney Pamela Coyne Brecht said in a press release. “Our entire legal team … is so very proud to have prevailed as Kayla’s and Scarlett’s advocates on behalf of US taxpayers who fund the Medicare program, which too often falls prey to kickback schemes.”

In 2014, lab partners Health Diagnostics Laboratories (HDL) and Singulex Inc. entered into ability-to-pay settlements for their roles as well, for $47 million and $1.5 million, respectively. Both companies have declared bankruptcy.

According to Pietragallo’s press release, Lutz began seeing checks from HDL and Singulex with patient names attached, prompting him to question why a doctor was being paid by a lab.

For years, others have uncovered the actions of HDL, Singulex and BlueWave, who...

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