CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Cornell Medical Center to Pay $4.3 Million to Settle Fraud Charges
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Corporate Crime Reporter 25(3), June 21, 2005
The Weill Medical College of Cornell University will pay $4.3 million to settle
federal charges that it engaged in fraud in connection with a children’s
center at the facility.
Federal officials alleged that the Medical College defrauded the government
and made false statements to the National Institutes of Health in connection
with a grant to the university’s Children’s Clinical Research Center.
The federal complaint
alleged that the university allowed one physician-investigator and the pediatric-endocrinology
division at Weill Medical College to “garner all the federal resources
and, in effect, dominate the research . . .at the expense of the government,”
contrary to controlling guidelines.
The university also allegedly charged the grant for the full salaries for certain
in-patient nurses when in fact those nurses never provided any services to the
children’s center.
It also allegedly charged the grant for the full salaries of an out-patient
nurse, four laboratory technicians, one laboratory aide and a grant administrator
when those employees did not dedicate 100 percent of their work effort to the
children’s center.
It also failed to account for outpatient services charged to the grant and double-billed
the Medicaid program for certain services charged to the grant, federal officials
alleged.
The False Claims Act lawsuit was originally brought by whistleblower Dr. Kyriakie
Sarafoglou, who was an assistant professor of pediatric medicine at the Weill
Medical College.
Corporate Crime Reporter
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