Life Spine and two executives agreed to pay about $5.99 million to resolve the federal government’s allegations that they violated the False Claims Act, Law360 reports.
Most of the settlement — $5.5 million — will be paid by Life Spine and $0.4 millions will fall to Michael Butler, Life Spine’s founder, president and CEO, and Richard Greiber (vice president of business development).
The agreement settles a civil healthcare fraud lawsuit filed July 23 by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney, which accused Life Spine, Mr. Butler and Mr. Greiber of paying surgeons what amounted to millions of dollars in kickbacks to use the company’s implants and equipment.
The alleged payments came in the form of consulting fees, royalties and intellectual property acquisition fees, with the surgeons who received them accounting for about half of Life Spine’s U.S. sales between 2012 and 2018, the government said.
The lawsuit was brought by a private whistleblower before the government intervened.