A Jersey City pharmacy and its owner have paid $62,500 to settle allegations that they violated the New Jersey False Claims Act by submitting false Medicaid claims, in a case litigated by Kennedy Vuernick.
The civil settlement agreement resolves allegations that UMR Pharmacy and Surgical, Inc., (“UMR”) and its owner Mohammad Ziauddin (“Ziauddin”), submitted false claims to New Jersey’s Medicaid program between February 2010 and May 2016. Kennedy Vuernick represented the whistleblower who came forward with information about UMR’s Medicaid billing. The whistleblower received a share of the settlement amount, as allowed under the False Claims Act. The State declined to intervene, and Kennedy Vuernick pursued the matter to conclusion for the benefit of its client and the state’s Medicaid program.
The civil complaint alleged that UMR submitted false claims to the Medicaid program by unlawfully paying patients to hand over their prescriptions to UMR without receiving the medications. The complaint alleged that UMR submitted claims to the Medicaid program, and received payments, as if it had actually dispensed the medications. The drugs included pain medications, such as oxycodone, and expensive AIDs medications. UMR and Ziauddin denied all allegations.
Kennedy Vuernick attorneys have been involved in False Claims Act recoveries totaling hundreds of millions of dollars in the past decade. With combined experience of nearly 30 years as white-collar prosecutors, Kennedy Vuernick attorneys draw on deep experience in presenting their client’s information to the government, and in litigating False Claims Act cases for the benefit of their clients.
