False Claims Act

The agreement by Maxim Healthcare Services, Inc., one of the country’s largest providers of home health care services, to pay $130 million to settle civil and criminal allegations relating to what the government characterizes as a “nationwide scheme to defraud Medicaid programs and the Veterans Affairs program” is the DOJ’s largest civil recovery in a home health care fraud case ever. 

Maxim Healthcare Services Inc., one of the nation’s leading providers of home healthcare services, has entered into a settlement to resolve criminal and civil charges relating to what federal prosecutors say was a nationwide scheme to defraud Medicaid programs and the Veterans Affairs program of more than $61 million.   

TriWest Healthcare Alliance Corporation, a contractor to TRICARE Management Activity, has agreed to pay $10 million to resolve civil false claims allegations, the Justice Department announced today.  TRICARE is the U.S. medical benefit plan which covers uniformed personnel, retirees, their dependents and reserve components. 

The U.S. has partially intervened in a lawsuit under the False Claims Act against Halifax Hospital Medical Center and Halifax Staffing Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.   

The United States has intervened in a lawsuit against Nurses’ Registry and Home Health Corporation in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.  The lawsuit was filed in March 2008 by two former Nurses’ Registry employees, Alicia Robinson-Hill and David Price, and alleges among other things that Nurses’ Registry made false claims to Medicare for medically unnecessary home health services.   

Pride Industries and its subsidiary, Pride Industries One, have agreed to pay the United States $400,000 to resolve allegations that they knowingly submitted false claims relating to a contract to provide maintenance services at the Department of the Army’s Ft. Bliss Army Base in El Paso, Texas. 

Joseph Ubaghs, a licensed clinical social worker, has entered into a civil settlement with the federal and state governments in which he will pay $210,000 to resolve allegations that he violated the False Claims Act. 

Armor Group North America Inc. (AGNA) and its affiliates have paid the United States $7.5 million to resolve allegations that AGNA submitted false claims for payment on a State Department contract to provide armed guard services at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. The settlement resolves U.S.

The Academy for Educational Development (AED) in Washington, D.C., has agreed to settle allegations that the company submitted false claims to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in connection with two cooperative agreements under which AED provided foreign assistance in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Federal prosecutors have filed a complaint under the False Claims Act (FCA) against Bay Area Sleep Associates LLC, dba SomnoMedics LLC, and its owner, Edward Killmer Jr. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, alleges that the defendants violated the FCA by knowingly submitting, or causing to be submitted, to the United States false claims for payments from multiple federal health care programs.