Washington: An Indian-origin chief financial officer of a spinal implant company was sentenced to a four-month jail term by a US federal court for bribing surgeons to use the company's products in exchange for sham consulting fees, authorities said.
After his jail term, Cambridge resident Aditya Humad, 41, will have one year of supervised release and pay a USD 9,500 fine.
He previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the anti-kickback statute.
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Humad was charged in September 2021 along with Kingsley R. Chin, SpineFrontier's Founder, President and CEO.
Humad conspired to pay and direct the payment of over USD 540,000 in bribes to surgeons in the form of sham consulting fees for work they did not perform, the US Attorney's Office, District of Massachusetts, said in a statement on Monday.
Humad conspired to bribe surgeons to use SpineFrontier's products, and in turn, the company received millions of dollars in revenue from surgeries the surgeons performed.
"This sentence is the culmination of years of dogged pursuit of SpineFrontier, its executives, Aditya Humad and Kingsley Chin, and multiple bribe-taking doctors," said United States Attorney Leah B Foley.
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Foley said Humad now stands convicted and sentenced for conspiracy to pay bribes to physicians to induce them to use products in complicated spine surgeries.
"In criminal and civil proceedings, we have recovered more than USD four million from these executives, their companies and the physicians who took their bribes. Let these resolutions serve as notice that no matter how long it takes, and how sophisticated the scheme, we will crack down on health care fraud offences," Foley said.
Authorities said Humad and SpineFrontier, Inc. entered into contracts that purportedly paid surgeons between USD 250 and USD 1,000 per hour to provide technical feedback about the company's products.
In reality, prosecutors said Humad directed the company to pay surgeons to use SpineFrontier products in surgeries, including procedures paid for by Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Health Administration.
The surgeons frequently spent only a small fraction of their reported time, if any, performing actual consulting, according to prosecutors. SpineFrontier received millions of dollars in revenue from surgeries performed by the surgeons.
"This corporate scheme sought to corruptly influence surgeons by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to induce the use of SpineFrontier's medical devices in surgeries," said Roberto Coviello, Special Agent in Charge at the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG).
He said Humad's actions undermined critical safeguards designed to protect patients and the integrity of taxpayer-funded health care programs.
