The finance chief of a Boston-area spinal implant company has pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe surgeons with over $540,000 in “sham consulting fees,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts announced Tuesday.
Court records show SpineFrontier CFO Aditya Humad entered a guilty plea this week to one count of conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general’s office defines that statute as “a criminal law that prohibits the knowing and willful payment of ‘remuneration’ to induce or reward patient referrals or the generation of business involving any item or service payable by the Federal health care programs.”
According to a Tuesday news release issued by U.S. Attorney Leah Foley’s office, Humad paid consulting fees to surgeons for work “they did not perform.” The release said Humad entered into contracts with surgeons and agreed to pay them between $250 and $1,000 per hour for “purported consulting” for SpineFrontier.
“In reality, however, Humad and (SpineFrontier CEO Kingsley R. Chin) paid the surgeons for using SpineFrontier’s products,” the release said. “Although the surgeon-consulting program was purportedly directed at gathering technical feedback about SpineFrontier’s products, Humad used the bribes they paid pursuant to that program, to induce surgeons to use SpineFrontier’s products in surgeries that were paid for by federal health care programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans Health Administration.”
Federal prosecutors first indicted Humad, Chin and SpineFrontier in August 2021, court records show. At the time, prosecutors charged the two men and the company with one count of conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute, as well as six counts of violating that law. Feds also charged defendants with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Humad’s guilty plea only encompasses the first charge. For his part, Lin just about a year ago pleaded guilty to making false statements to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and was sentenced to one year of supervised release. Lin was also ordered to pay “$9,500 in addition to $40,000 he personally agreed to pay as part of a related civil settlement and $855,000 his wholly-owned company agreed to pay as part of the same settlement,” Foley’s news release stated.
The release noted that a surgeon and a medical device distributor also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute.
When reached by email Wednesday, attorneys for Humad had no comment on his guilty plea.
