A small group of people, including a 38-year-old Hillsborough man, were sentenced in federal court last week for their involvement in a $100 million scheme that bribed doctors for test referrals.
Doug Hurley was sentenced to 24 months in prison as the result of an ongoing investigation, that has so far garnered 53 convictions.
Along with Hurley, Kevin Kerekes, 52, of Florham Park, was also sentenced to 24 months in prison.
Luke Chicco, 45, of Garden City, New York, were sentenced to 21 months in prison. Kristina Hamdan, 40, of Paterson was sentenced to 41 months in prison. David McCann, 45, of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, was sentenced to three years of probation.
According to officials, Hurley, Kerekes, and Chicco admitted to investigators that from the fall of 2010 through April 2013, they conspired with Biodiagnostic Laboratory Services LLC. (BLS) President and part owner David Nicoll and his brother, Scott Nicoll, to pay bribes to doctors in the forms of cash, checks and other means in order to induce them to refer patient blood specimens.
Officials said those same three individuals Hurley, Kerekes, and Chicco admitted to sometimes paying bribes to doctors through fraudulent consulting companies that they created and controlled. The companies were used in order to hide the fact that BLS was the true source of the bribes.
Court documents and testimony also revealed that Hamdan admitted that from November 2009 through April 2013, she paid doctors bribes in exchange for blood specimen referrals to BLS.
For example, Hamdan bribed Yousef Zibdie, an internal medicine doctor with a practice in Woodland Park, in exchange for generating more than $900,000 in lab business for BLS.
The bribes were funded by the Parsippany-based company and, in an effort to obscure that BLS was the actual source of the payments paid to the doctors by Hamdan, she made the payments through a false consulting company that she created and controlled.
Investigators alleged that McCann paid thousands of dollars in cash on a monthly basis between December 2011 and April 2013 to numerous physicians on behalf of BLS in exchange for the doctors’ referral of blood specimens.
The scheme’s organizers have since reported that the bribes and resulting blood specimen referrals yielded more than $100 million in payments to BLS from Medicare and other private insurance companies.
Officials said the investigation has recovered more than $13 million through forfeiture.
On June 28, 2016, BLS, which is no longer operational, pleaded guilty and was required to forfeit all of its assets.
U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito credited special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Gregory W. Ehrie in Newark; inspectors of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, under the direction of Acting Inspector in Charge Ruth M. Mendonca; IRS–Criminal Investigation, under the direction of Acting Special Agent in Charge Bryant Jackson in Newark; and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Scott J. Lampert, with the ongoing investigation.