Category: kickbacks

Biogen Agrees to Pay $900 Million in Drug Kickbacks Settlement, Denies Wrongdoing

Pharmaceutical giant Biogen has agreed to pay $900 million to settle claims that it paid kickbacks to physicians to encourage them to prescribe its multiple sclerosis drugs, the Department of Justice announced on Monday. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company’s settlement resolves a lawsuit filed in 2012 by former Biogen employee turned whistleblower, Michael Bawduniak. Bawduniak sued Biogen under the False…


Former Head of LADWP Gets 6 Years in Federal Prison in Corruption Case

LOS ANGELES—A former top executive of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) was sentenced on April 25 to six years in federal prison for his role in a bribery scheme stemming from a probe of the city’s handling of the botched launch of a DWP billing system. David H. Wright, 62, of…


Disgraced Former Dallas Councilman Is Released from Federal Prison

Dwaine Caraway—the former mayor pro-tempore of Dallas, Texas, and a five-term city councilman—was released from prison in February after his conviction for tax evasion and accepting bribes with kickbacks totaling nearly half a million dollars. Caraway was sentenced to federal prison in April of 2019. The disgraced councilman came back to the public eye for…


Device Makers Have Funneled Billions to Orthopedic Surgeons Who Use Their Products

Dr. Kingsley R. Chin was little more than a decade out of Harvard Medical School when the sales of his spine surgical implants took off. Chin has patented more than 40 pieces of such hardware, including doughnut-shaped plastic cages, titanium screws, and other products used to repair spines—generating $100 million for his company, SpineFrontier, according…