WASHINGTON, Aug 11: An Indian-origin chief financial officer of a US spinal implant company has been sentenced to four months in prison for bribing surgeons to use the company’s medical products in exchange for sham consulting fees, federal authorities said.
Aditya Humad, 41, of Cambridge, will also serve one year of supervised release and pay a USD 9,500 fine following his prison term.
Humad had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the federal anti-kickback statute.
He was charged in September 2021 along with Kingsley R. Chin, founder, president and CEO of SpineFrontier, Inc.
According to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, Humad conspired to pay more than USD 540,000 in bribes to surgeons through purported consulting fees for services they did not actually perform.
The payments were allegedly intended to persuade surgeons to use SpineFrontier’s products during spinal surgeries, generating millions of dollars in revenue for the company.
Authorities said Humad and SpineFrontier entered into contracts under which surgeons were purportedly paid between USD 250 and USD 1,000 an hour to provide technical feedback on the company’s products.
Prosecutors, however, said the surgeons often spent little or no time performing legitimate consulting work. Instead, Humad allegedly directed the payments to encourage them to use SpineFrontier devices in surgeries, including procedures reimbursed through Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Health Administration.
US Attorney Leah C Foley said the sentence marked the culmination of a lengthy investigation into SpineFrontier, its executives and doctors who allegedly accepted bribes.
She said authorities had recovered more than USD 4 million through criminal and civil proceedings involving the executives, their companies and physicians who received the payments.
“This case demonstrates that no matter how long it takes or how sophisticated the scheme, we will crack down on health care fraud,” Foley said.
Roberto Coviello, Special Agent in Charge at the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, said the scheme sought to improperly influence surgeons by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to encourage the use of SpineFrontier medical devices.
He said such conduct undermined safeguards intended to protect patients and preserve the integrity of taxpayer-funded healthcare programmes.
