The US Attorney’s Office has filed a civil healthcare fraud complaint against SpineFrontier, Inc.; Impartial Medical Experts, LLC (IME); Kingsley Chin, the founder and CEO of SpineFrontier; Aditya Humad, the CFO of SpineFrontier; Vanessa Dudley, Chin’s wife and the Business Administrator of IME; and other entities Chin owns and controls. The government alleges that SpineFrontier, based in Malden, Mass., and the other defendants paid, and conspired to pay, kickbacks in the form of sham consulting fees via a sham third-party, IME. The lawsuit alleges that the defendants made these payments to surgeons to induce them to use SpineFrontier’s devices in spinal surgeries. The government contends that the defendants violated the Anti-Kickback Statute, and as a result caused federal healthcare programs to pay millions of dollars in false claims. In addition, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has settled civil healthcare fraud claims against five physicians, each of whom admits to seeking and obtaining kickbacks from SpineFrontier, via the sham third-party IME, for consulting work he did not perform. Further, each physician admits that one or more of SpineFrontier, Chin, or Humad specifically instructed him to bill “consulting” hours to SpineFrontier for each and every surgery in which he used a SpineFrontier device, regardless of whether he spent any time actually consulting.
