Justice Department Sues UnitedHealth Again Over $1 Billion in Alleged False Claims

The U.S. Justice Department for the second time in a month sued UnitedHealth Group on Tuesday, accusing the nation's largest health insurer of obtaining over $1 billion from Medicare to which it was not entitled.

The complaint, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, came after the Justice Department brought a separate but similar case against UnitedHealth . In both cases, the government intervened in whistleblower lawsuits against UnitedHealth.

The latest complaint came after the Justice Department intervened in a lawsuit brought by former UnitedHealth executive Benjamin Poehling, whose whistleblower case was filed under seal in 2011. read more »

U.S. Admiral in ‘Fat Leonard’ Navy Scandal Sentenced to 18 Months

Rear Adm. Robert Gilbeau, the first admiral ever convicted of a federal crime while on active duty, was sentenced on Wednesday to 18 months in prison for lying to investigators about his involvement in a bribery scandal that has ensnared numerous Navy officers.

Admiral Gilbeau pleaded guilty last June to making false statements when he told agents that he had never received any gifts from Leonard Glenn Francis, a Malaysian ship supplier at the center of a bribery scandal

Mr. Francis, who is known as Fat Leonard, has been charged in the case with 19 Navy officers. Ten of the officers have pleaded guilty, mostly for accepting Mr. Leonard’s bribes of trips and prostitutes in return for routing ships to ports where he could ring up millions of dollars in fraudulent charges. read more »

U.S. Government Working to Settle Foreign Corruption Claims Over 'Wolf of Wall Street'

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors told a California federal judge that the U.S. government is "actively discussing a potential settlement" with Red Granite Pictures, the financier of The Wolf of Wall Street. If a deal is reached, the Trump Administration will resolve a key component of the largest ever targeting of alleged foreign corruption in an American court.

Less than a year ago, federal authorities filed several civil forfeiture cases aimed at seizing more than $1 billion in assets tied to a fund called 1Malaysia Development Berdhard (1MDB). The U.S. government alleged that money was diverted by high-level officials in Malaysia into shell companies and then into a wide variety of property including Beverly Hills and New York City real estate, artwork by Van Gogh and Claude Monet, a Bombardier jet, and funding for Red Granite, run by CEO Riza Aziz, the stepson of Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak.

In one of the cases, the U.S. government took the unprecedented step of seeking rights and profits from the Oscar-nominated film, The Wolf of Wall Street, directed by Martin Scorsese, which coincidentally, covered the real-life story of the FBI's takedown of a financial firm for corruption in the 1990s. read more »

Texas Senator Carlos Uresti Facing 200 Years in Prison Over Corruption Charges

State Senator Carlos Uresti was indicted on multiple criminal charges related to his dealings with a bankrupt frac-sand company and corruption in Reeves County, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Uresti was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud; two counts of conspiracy to commit money laundering; five more substantive counts of wire fraud; two counts of securities fraud; one count of engaging in monetary transactions with property derived from specified unlawful activity; one count of being an unregistered securities broker; and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 13 charges and more than 200 years in prison facing the San Antonio Democrat. In a statement, Uresti said he plans to plead not guilty and called the charges “groundless.” In February, FBI and IRS agents raided his offices  in connection to Uresti’s alleged involvement in developing a Ponzi scheme to peddle fracking sand for oil production. The other indictment alleges that from 2006 to 2016, a Lubbock businessman paid Uresti $10,000 a month to secure a Reeves County Correctional Center medical services contract for his company. read more »

'The Madoff of millennials’? Fyre Festival investors eye a court fight with organizer

Investor believes that until detailed accounts emerge, suspicions will mount that festival was an elaborate Ponzi scheme and buried in debt before it even began

nvestors in the ill-fated Fyre Festival in the Bahamas will begin to assert legal claims against organizer William “Billy” McFarland this week in what is likely to be a protracted effort to recover assets from the supermodel-fronted luxury private-island music festival that collapsed in spectacular discord last month, stranding hundreds.

The first petition to freeze festival assets to get a court hearing comes from Oleg Itkin, a Manhattan investor who says he handed over a $700,000 loan from January to April to fund a Fyre-branded app designed to streamline the process of booking entertainers for private and corporate events.

Itkin claims McFarland showed him a projected income statement showing $932m in proceeds from the festival and the app. Lawyers for Itkin provided documents showing organizers claimed $31m in assets in January, including land in Grand Exuma valued at $8.4m. read more »

Judge may reject parts of Wells Fargo account abuse settlement

A federal judge signaled that he may reject parts of Wells Fargo & Co's proposed $142 million settlement with customers for whom it opened millions of unauthorized accounts.

In an order on Tuesday evening, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco ordered lawyers for customers and the bank to address his concerns, including whether the entire settlement should be rejected, before a scheduled Thursday hearing to consider preliminary approval. read more »

Merck, Upsher-Smith to pay $60 mln in 'pay-for-delay' drug case

Merck & Co Inc and Upsher-Smith Laboratories Inc have agreed to pay $60.2 million to resolve a lawsuit that said they entered into a deal to unlawfully delay the availability of generic versions of potassium supplement K-Dur.

The settlement, disclosed in papers filed in federal court in Newark, New Jersey on Monday, came in a class action filed in 2001 arising out of a settlement in patent litigation between Upsher-Smith and Schering-Plough Corp, now owned by Merck.

That patent deal, plaintiffs in the antitrust class action said, was an example of a "pay-for-delay" settlement, in which brand-name drug makers pay generic companies to keep their products off the market for a longer period. read more »