The federal government has demonstrated that it is more than willing to use the United States criminal code to prosecute home care agencies that pay unlawful financial inducements to generate referrals in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS).

In a superseding indictment unsealed in March 2025, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District…

An article in the August issue of Healthcare Risk Management, “DOJ Targeting Healthcare for False Claims Act Enforcement,” discussed recent enforcement activity by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) under the False Claims Act (FCA). Rivkin Radler’s Jeff Kaiser was quoted in the article.

Jeff predicted that the FCA will continue to…

The epidemic of out-of-control generative artificial intelligence in litigation filings has metastasized to a False Claims Act (FCA) lawsuit against a group of Utah anesthesiologists. On July 25, Mountain West Anesthesia, LLC and individual defendants in the case moved to bar the testimony of a medical billing expert whose report was riddled with AI-generated errors…

The owner of Sublime Medical Transportation in Schenectady County, New York was recently sentenced to three to nine years in state prison for orchestrating a large Medicaid fraud scheme. Muhammed Adnan Saeed netted over $700,000, along with more than $60,000 in unemployment benefits to which he was not entitled.

Between 2019 and 2023, Saeed routinely…

On July 2, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the formation of the DOJ-HHS False Claims Act Working Group to strengthen “their ongoing collaboration to advance priority enforcement areas” in combating healthcare fraud. The two agencies cited the long history of partnership between them in enforcing…

Cigna filed a lawsuit on June 24 in Manhattan federal court accusing Bristol Myers Squibb of unlawfully blocking generic versions of its blood cancer drug, Pomalyst, from entering the market. The suit also names Celgene, a Bristol Myers subsidiary that originally developed and marketed the drug. Cigna alleges that Celgene violated U.S. antitrust laws by…

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has announced another settlement for alleged violations of HIPAA. OCR investigated BayCare Health System, which serves central Florida, after a patient complained to OCR in 2018 that her medical record was accessed by an unauthorized individual.

The patient told OCR that she…

Tennr, a healthcare technology company focused on streamlining healthcare operations, recently announced the receipt of $101 million in funding. While the investment signals growing confidence in AI-enabled administrative tools, Tennr’s real innovation lies in the technology it has developed to address one of healthcare’s most persistent inefficiencies: the referral process.

The company’s proprietary AI model…

The Nassau County District Attorney recently charged Joseph Golyan, a Great Neck gastroenterologist, with collecting Social Security and other government benefits over a four-year period, while simultaneously billing Medicare for care he was providing to Medicare beneficiaries. He allegedly collected over $100,000 in disability benefits, while billing Medicare over $700,000, during the relevant period. The…

Last month, the head of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Matthew R. Galeotti, issued a Memorandum outlining DOJ’s enforcement priorities and policies for prosecuting white-collar crime, identifying three core tenets to guide prosecutors: “(1) focus; (2) fairness; and (3) efficiency.”

Among the areas of focus listed, the Memorandum identified as…