ROSWELL, Ga. — The Department of Justice announced Feb. 28 that Andrew “Drew” Maloney, a 57-year-old Roswell resident, pleaded guilty to criminal information charging him with conspiracy to pay health care kickbacks.
Maloney and the clinical laboratory he owned, Atlanta-based Capstone Diagnostics, have agreed to pay around $14.3 million to resolve allegations that they violated the Anti-Kickback Statute by paying volume-based commissions to independent contractor sales representatives to arrange for or recommend medically unnecessary urine drug tests and respiratory pathogen panels.
Maloney and Capstone have also agreed to cooperate with the Department of Justice’s investigations of other participants in the alleged schemes.
According to U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan, between August 2017 and December 2018, Capstone entered into an arrangement with a program operating as Do It 4 the Hood (D4H), which held itself out as providing after-school mentoring services to at-risk teenagers in Georgia. Once enrolled, participants were required to submit to frequent urine specimen collections for drug testing without regard to medical need or the history of the participant.
Maloney was aware that the participants needed the tests to participate in the program and that many of these participants were covered by Medicaid. Capstone, with Maloney’s knowledge and approval, paid the operators of D4H a percentage of Medicaid reimbursements for samples submitted by the program, in violation of federal law.
While the scheme was ongoing, Capstone submitted over $1 million in claims, causing Georgia Medicaid to pay out at least $400,000 in claims related to the fraudulent drug testing.
In addition to Maloney’s guilty plea, four others have pleaded guilty in connection with this fraudulent drug testing scheme including 45-year-old Duriel…
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