Millennium Settles Genetics Testing National Fraud Case

Contact: J. Marc Vezina and Monica P. Navarro

Date: October 19, 2015

Vezina Law Group announced today a $10 million settlement of a False Claims Act lawsuit between its client Omni Healthcare Inc., et al (“Omni”), Defendant Millenium Health, LLC (formerly, Millennium Laboratories, Inc.) (“Millennium”), and the United States of America, acting through the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts and on behalf of the Office of Inspector General (“HHS-OIG”) of the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) (collectively, the “United States”), among other parties.

Millennium is a lab which markets and performs laboratory testing services, including pharmacogenetic testing (“PGT”), for healthcare providers nationwide, including Omni, a healthcare provider in Melbourne, Florida which discovered and courageously exposed the testing fraud. The settlement resolves allegations that Millennium violated the federal False Claims Act and numerous State Acts by billing federal and state healthcare programs for medically unnecessary PGT services that were performed on a routine and pre-emptive basis without any assessment of individual need, thus bilking millions of dollars from public healthcare programs.

Omni’s lawsuit was filed in 2014 in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, captioned United States ex rel. Omni Healthcare Inc., et al. v. Millennium Laboratories, Inc. No.14-cv-13052, pursuant to the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3730(b) (“FCA”). The FCA allows private persons with knowledge of fraud against a government program to file lawsuits on the government’s behalf. If the case is successful, the private plaintiffs, known as “relators,” are entitled to a percentage of the government’s recovery. The FCA provides for recovery of treble (triple) the single damages incurred by the government as a result of the fraud, as well as civil monetary penalties of between $5,500 and $11,000 per false claim submitted and statutory attorney fees. In this case, the relators will receive 16.5% of the recovery.

Relators were represented by J. Marc Vezina and Monica P. Navarro, partners at Vezina Law, PLC, a member of the Vezina Law Group with offices in Birmingham, Michigan and New Orleans, Louisiana. The United States was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sonya A. Rao of the District of Massachusetts, as well as Douglas J. Rosenthal and Augustine M. Ripa of the Commercial Litigation Branch of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Vezina Law Group is a full-service law firm with hundreds of millions of dollars in False Claims Act/Qui Tam recoveries. www.vezinalaw.com