Gerald Congdon, MD, of Pawleys Island, South Carolina; Gbenga Aluko, MD, of Charlotte, North Carolina; and Anup Banerjee, MD, of Gastonia, North Carolina, and their medical practices; as well as Curis Healthcare Inc., of Chicago, Illinois, Omar Hussain, of South Miami, Florida, and Saeed Medical Group Ltd. doing business as Alliance Immediate and Primary Care of Chicago, Illinois, agreed to pay a total of $1,913,808 to resolve alleged False Claims Act violations arising from their involvement in laboratory kickback schemes. The parties have agreed to cooperate with the Department of Justice’s investigations of other participants in the alleged schemes. The settlements announced today resolve allegations that healthcare providers received kickbacks in return for their referrals to a laboratory in Anderson, South Carolina, and that a marketer and his marketing company received kickbacks from that South Carolina laboratory to arrange for laboratory testing referrals, in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute. The kickbacks allegedly resulted in the submission of false or fraudulent laboratory testing claims to Medicare and TRICARE in violation of the False Claims Act.
