Ex-medical manager wins $3.6M in whistleblower settlement
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An Indianapolis-based medical supply company’s former manager has won $3.6 million in a settlement of her whistleblower lawsuit accusing that company and a health insurance company of defrauding a government insurance program.
Crystal Derrick, who was a national account manager in Roche Diagnostics Corp.’s diabetes division, was awarded the money nearly two years after filing the whistleblower case against her former employer, according to documents filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Chicago.
Roche Diagnostics and Humana Inc., a Louisville, Kentucky-based health insurer, paid $12.5 million to settle a lawsuit after Derrick accused them of defrauding a government insurance program.
Derrick received 29% of that settlement agreement, totaling $3.625 million. The remainder of the payment went to the government, the Indianapolis Business Journal reported.
In her lawsuit, Derrick said Roche Diagnostics had paid Humana for access to certain formularies — a list of prescription drugs or medical products covered by an insurance plan — after Roche decided not to recover rebate overpayments it had learned that Humana owed it.
Humana’s formularies included a wide range of Roche diabetes products, including its Accu-Chek product line, insulin pump and test strips.
Derrick, who left Roche in December 2013, claimed the two companies violated the Anti-Kickback Statute and False Claims Act, and defrauded taxpayers by causing false claims to be submitted to the Medicare Advantage program.
The Anti-Kickback Statute makes it a felony to knowingly pay or accept money to induce anyone to furnish any item or service for payment under a federal health care program.
US charges son in civilian Navy staffer’s killing in Bahrain
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. prosecutors have charged the son of a civilian Navy staffer in Bahrain over her stabbing death in the Mideast island kingdom.
Federal court documents accuse Giovonni Z. Pope, 27, of stabbing his mother to death at her off-base apartment on Jan. 31. Contact details for Pope could not be immediately found and his listed public defender declined to comment Saturday.
Court documents only identify his mother by the initials E.A., describing her as a civilian Defense Department employee at Naval Support Activity Bahrain, the home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. She had worked there since September 2017.
An affidavit by a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service says the woman’s co-workers became worried when she didn’t come to work Feb. 1. Investigators discovered her body under a blanket in her apartment, repeatedly stabbed.
Bahraini police later arrested Pope. He told Bahraini investigators at one point that he killed his mother as she “was blocking him from achieving his goals by not letting him return to the United States to work on his clothing business,” the agent’s affidavit claims. He had allegedly used his mother’s credit card after the killing to purchase airfare back to the U.S. to visit his girlfriend.
Bahrain had declined to prosecute Pope if the U.S. tried him, the agent said. U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas M. DiGirolamo of Maryland issued an order Thursday for him to be brought back to America to face trial on a murder charge.
The U.S. Embassy in Bahrain and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday, nor did Bahrain’s Interior Ministry.
Case against indicted sheriff on hold again after recusal
ATHENS, Ala. (AP) — The case against a longtime Alabama sheriff accused of theft and ethics violations is being delayed again after a judge stepped aside.
Retired Circuit Judge Pride Tompkins cited his own risk of catching the coronavirus in a one-sentence order issued Wednesday recusing himself from the case against Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely.
Blakely, 70, was indicted on multiple felony charges in August 2019 on a dozen felony counts and one misdemeanor alleging he stole campaign donations, used his job to obtain interest-free loans and solicited money from employees. Blakely has continued working since Alabama law does not require the suspension of sheriffs who are under indictment.
An initial trial date nearly a year ago was canceled because of the pandemic, and the case has been delayed ever since.
The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court will appoint a replacement for Tompkins, who was tapped for the case after other judges stepped down.
Court rules against Apaches in bid to halt proposed mine
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A federal judge has rejected a request from a group of Apaches to keep the U.S. Forest Service from transferring a parcel of land to a copper mining company.
Apache Stronghold made the request as part of a lawsuit it filed against the Forest Service earlier this year. It’s the latest attempt to preserve the land in eastern Arizona that Apaches consider sacred because of the spiritual properties there at least temporarily while the court hears arguments on the merits of the case.
U.S. District Judge Steven Logan said Friday that because the group is not a federally recognized tribe with a government-to government relationship with the United States, it lacks standing in arguing that the land belongs to Apaches under an 1852 treaty with the U.S.
Even read liberally, Logan said “the court cannot infer an enforceable trust duty as to any individual Indians.”
For a favorable ruling, Apache Stronghold had to prove that the land transfer would cause imminent and irreparable harm and that it was likely to prevail on its claims, which include violations of religious freedom.
U.S. Department of Justice attorneys representing the Forest Service had argued Apache Stronghold didn’t do that, and Logan agreed.
“I am very disappointed but I’m not giving up,” Apache Stronghold leader Wendsler Nosie, Sr. said in a Friday night statement. “I’m excited to get back in there to also get an Appeal and once again to discuss where we disagree.”
The Tonto National Forest Service has said it does not comment on litigation.
The land known as Oak Flat is set to be transferred to Resolution Copper by March 16, 60 days after the Forest Service published an environmental impact statement as mandated by Congress. The land transfer
was included as a last-minute provision in must-pass defense bill in 2014 after it failed for years as stand-alone legislation.
Apaches call the mountainous area Chi’chil Bildagoteel. The land near Superior has ancient oak groves, traditional plants and living beings that tribal members say are essential to their religion and culture. Those things exist elsewhere, but Apache Stronghold said they have unique power within Oak Flat.
Logan acknowledged the mine would make Oak Flat inaccessible as a place of worship and “close off a portal to the Creator forever and will completely devastate the Western Apaches’ spiritual lifeblood.”
But he said the group didn’t meet the standard for proving violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act: being deprived of a government benefit or coerced into violating religious beliefs.
“It isn’t something the government gave to the Western Apaches, like unemployment benefits, and then took away because of their religion” Logan wrote in his ruling. “Similarly, building a mine on the land isn’t a civil or criminal ‘sanction’ under the RFRA.”
Attorneys for the Forest Service said the land legally belongs to the United States and that transferring its own property isn’t a substantial burden to the Apache group’s ability to practice its religion.
Resolution Copper, a joint venture of global mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto, has said it would not deny Apaches access to Oak Flat after it receives the land and for as long as it’s safe. But, eventually, the mine would swallow the site.
Resolution Copper has said the mine could have a $61 billion impact over the project’s expected 60 years and employ up to 1,500 people. It would be one of the largest copper mines in the U.S.
Alaska Federal court halts drilling at major oil project
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A federal appeals court ordered work to stop at a major oil project on Alaska’s North Slope, siding with conservation and Indigenous groups.
The decision Saturday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will stop on-the-ground work for the winter at the Willow project operated by ConocoPhillips Co., the Anchorage Daily News reported Sunday.
Ice roads support wintertime work at projects on Alaska’s North Slope, but they melt in the spring and that drastically reduces what can be done for all but a handful of months.
The Willow project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska was expected to provide jobs for about 120 people this year.
Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and other groups sued last fall to stop the project altogether, not just in winter. They argue that the Trump administration didn’t follow environmental laws before approving the project.
This month, the groups asked the 9th Circuit to overturn a U.S. District Court decision to allow winter work to continue. After the groups appealed, short-term work was halted.
Ninth Circuit Judges William Canby and Michelle Friedland agreed that the plaintiffs would be harmed without an injunction that stops the work until the court can rule on the case itself.
ConocoPhillips spokeswoman Natalie Lowman didn’t say in an email Sunday whether the company plans to appeal the work stoppage.
ConocoPhillips is expected to decide later this year if it will pay billions of dollars to develop Willow for oil production, with the first oil not expected to flow until the mid-2020s.
Siqiniq Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic, said in a statement that “Arctic Slope communities have suffered health issues and the loss of traditional practices and food sources because of oil extraction.”
“Decision makers and decision-making processes that impact the Arctic Slope must not just claim to include or consider us, but in fact prioritize our health and well-being,” Maupin said.
Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska program director for Defenders of Wildlife, said the project threatens people and wildlife in the Southern Beaufort Sea region.
“The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else in the world,” Whittington-Evans said. “Moving forward with this fossil fuel project would be at the great expense of wildlife and communities.”
Republican state Sen. Josh Revak, chairman of the Senate Resources Committee, said in a statement that the order was a “body blow” to struggling Alaska residents.
“In the Willow project lies the hope of hundreds of millions of barrels of oil in the pipeline and thousands of good-paying jobs for decades — all developed using the strictest environmental standards on the planet,” Revak said.
Police: Brother charged in sister’s stabbing death over $100
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas City man has been charged with second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the stabbing death of his sister that police say was over a $100 debt.
Michael Childs, 68, faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted of killing his sister, Stephanie Hunt, television station WDAF reported.
Police said the stabbing happened Friday, when Childs said he and Hunt had been drinking and had begun arguing over $100 he said she owed him. Childs told police that his sister attacked him, knocking him down twice while holding a butcher knife. Childs said he grabbed the knife away from her and began waving it in front of him “to fend her off.”
Childs told police she then went to lie down on a bed, while he cleaned up. Childs told officers he was not aware he had mortally wounded Hunt until hours later.
