One defendant has pleaded guilty, and three others and a physician-owned testing lab have been indicted following the investigation of kickbacks in connection with laboratory testing services. The grand jury returned indictments on November 6, 2019, against Jae Lee, 48, Richard Reid, 50, Kevin Puls, 54, and Northwest Physicians Laboratory of Bellevue, Washington. Northwest Physicians Laboratory (NWPL) and its relationship to Molecular Testing Labs (MTL) of Vancouver, Washington, are described in the plea agreement of Steven P. Verschoor, 52, of Boise, Idaho, a co-founder of MTL. Verschoor pleaded guilty on October 30, 2019, admitting that he paid kickbacks to NWPL for referring urine tests to be performed at MTL. According to the plea statements, starting in 2014, MTL agreed to pay NWPL as much as $100,000 per month to send patient urine tests to the Vancouver lab. NWPL is physician-owned, and for that reason could not test urine samples for patients covered by government health programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE. In order to conceal the payment of the kickbacks, MTL and NWPL described the fees as being for marketing services; however, Verschoor was not aware of any marketing services being performed. In all, MTL paid NWPL $450,000. In exchange, MTL was able to bill the government more than $2,000,000 for urine testing services.The indictment charges NWPL and the three executives with conspiracy to both solicit kickbacks and pay kickbacks. The indictment charges four additional counts of receipt of kickbacks.
