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Supreme Court backs FCC in-house penalty system over wireless carriers

Illustration accompanying article: Supreme Court backs FCC in-house penalty system over wireless carriers
  • The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 on June 4 that the FCC may impose fines through in-house forfeiture proceedings without violating wireless carriers' constitutional right to a jury trial.
  • Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion; Justice Clarence Thomas was the court's lone dissenter.
  • The FCC had levied nearly $200 million in total fines against AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint for unlawfully selling access to customer location data to third parties without user consent.
  • The court accepted the Trump administration's argument that the FCC's administrative process does not bar companies from later challenging penalties before a jury in federal court.
 3 MIN READ

DOJ secures 6 healthcare fraud convictions in 3 weeks

Illustration accompanying article: DOJ secures 6 healthcare fraud convictions in 3 weeks
  • The Justice Department secured convictions of six people across five states between May 13 and June 1 for healthcare fraud totaling approximately $1.1 billion in fraudulent billing, according to a department press release.
  • The largest scheme, run by Brett Blackman and his company HealthSplash, generated more than $1 billion in false claims for medically unnecessary orthopedic braces; Medicare paid over $450 million.
  • Dr. Violetta Mailya billed Medicare $24 million for Botox injections she never administered, including $19 million while her clinic was closed.
  • Tony Brown-Arkah operated a Brooklyn substance abuse clinic that prescribed Suboxone and then repurchased the drug from patients, generating over $52 million in false Medicare and Medicaid claims.
  • Heather Marks, a nurse practitioner, prescribed nearly one million opioid pills to almost 1,000 pain clinic patients in Tennessee.
 3 MIN READ
Illustration accompanying article: Jury convicts short seller Andrew Left of securities fraud