Vic Wadhwa faces 5 years in prison.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: The chief financial officer of a group of pain management clinics, Vic Wadhwa, 38, of Frederick, Maryland, has pleaded guilty to soliciting and receiving kickbacks in return for referrals at lab tests from a medical practice.
The group’s clinics operated by Wadhwa required its patients who have been prescribed pain relief medications to submit urine samples for testing in order to monitor the levels of pain medication or other narcotics in their bodies. The group’s clinics generated hundreds of urine samples each month, which were sent to an outside lab for testing, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
In March 2011, Wadhwa and others at the group’s clinics decided to shift the group’s testing business to a laboratory testing company in New Jersey, after learning that the lab testing company was willing to pay a kickback for every urine sample that the group of clinics submitted for testing.
Wadhwa negotiated the arrangement, whereby the lab company promised to pay kickbacks equal to half of its profit, after accounting for expenses, for every urine sample that the group of clinics submitted for testing.
The group of clinics submitted urine samples for testing to the lab company from approximately March 2011 to August 2012. During this time, the lab company received total reimbursement payments of $4,033.846.70 from private insurers, Medicare and the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program for lab tests ordered by the group of clinics.
Between the time the kickback payments commenced in July 2011 and the end of the scheme in July 2012, the lab company paid the group of clinics a total of $1,376,540.85 in kickbacks. Out of this amount, Wadhwa received approximately $459,245.
The investigation is ongoing, said the FBI.
Wadhwa faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis has scheduled sentencing for April 2, 2015.