On May 25th the Department of Justice announced that Vasso Godiali, a vascular surgeon from Bay City, Michigan, agreed to pay the United States up to $43 million to resolve allegations that he violated the False Claims Act (FCA). The agreement between him and the government described alleged fraudulent billings to Medicare and Medicaid.
Before the civil settlement was reached, Godiali reached a plea agreement on criminal healthcare fraud charges sentencing him to 80 months in prison for orchestrating a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud health care programs. According to the settlement agreement, Godiali acknowledges that beginning in 2009 he caused his employees to bill Medicare and Medicaid for placing multiple stents in the same vessel for the same patient, in effect charging the federal healthcare programs for operations he did not perform. He also submitted payments for thrombectomies (removals of blood clots) that were never performed. $14.5 million of the total $43 million settlement is set aside for restitution to the government. A civil forfeiture case resulted in the seizure of approximately $39.9 million from financial accounts controlled by Godiali.
“We will not tolerate the use of federal health care programs as a source of personal enrichment,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “Today’s settlement demonstrates our commitment to protecting the integrity of those programs and...
Dangote Group has dismissed as false and malicious a publication alleging that its President, Aliko Dangote, distanced himself from Tony Elumelu, describing the report as entirely baseless. In a s...