Kickbacks

A Northridge doctor and three other physicians have been charged with paying illegal kickbacks to a medical referral firm that is under investigation for workers compensation fraud. The physicians allegedly paid for patient referrals from L.A. Management, a former Sherman Oaks firm under investigation for possibly paying kickbacks to get patients from companies that process workers' compensation claims for some employers and insurers. The investigation of L.A.

Fannie Mae has fired the executive who headed its Irvine office amid a federal investigation into alleged kickbacks from real estate brokers. One former employee of the home-finance giant has been indicted on charges of soliciting illegal payments from a broker, and another former worker has alleged that such conduct was common at the office. Federal investigators are trying to determine whether the alleged corruption extended to other employees, according to two people with knowledge of the probe.

Federal law prohibits kickbacks among brokers and others in home real estate deals. That sounds pretty straightforward: You can't give money to someone simply for steering a home buyer or refinancer to a particular title agency, mortgage lender or escrow company without providing any actual services to the consumer. Yet as four recent legal settlements suggest, there is still plenty of action underway at the fringes of the law, where technology and creative financial arrangements are raising new questions about what's permissible and what's not. Take the multimillion-dollar settlement July 11 between the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Fidelity National Financial Inc., the country's highest-volume title insurance and settlement services company.

WASHINGTON - A settlement between the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a Texas home builder is drawing renewed attention to a controversial issue that was prominent during the years preceding the housing bubble: kickbacks in home real estate transactions. Put another way, do you know where your money is really going when you pay thousands of dollars in loan fees and closing charges? Is your realty broker or builder getting an extra piece of the action through side deals with lenders or title companies - all at your expense through higher charges?

On the Home Shopping Network, the story lines are as thin as an overworked credit card. About the only drama unfolding amid the endless parade of cut-rate merchandise offered to cable television viewers is whether perky hostess Erin Morrissey's enthusiasm will give out before the supply of pink cubic zirconia bracelets at $29.75 each. But from behind the scenes of the $1-billion-a-year merchant-of-the-air have come details of a continuing drama that sounds improbable even by TV movie standards.

California and three dozen other states formed a task force Friday to investigate whether the abuses alleged at a New York state retirement fund are taking place at public pension agencies across the country. The announcement marks the latest expansion of a pay-to-play probe that has increasingly revealed California connections. New York Atty. Gen.

California regulators are taking aim at giant drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., accusing it of bribing doctors and pharmacists to use its products by offering thousands of cash kickbacks, gifts and "happy hours" with the Los Angeles Lakers. The case against the drug company was developed with the help of former Lakers player Lucius Allen and his wife, Eve, who worked for Bristol-Myers and provided access to the basketball team, according to a lawsuit made public Friday. Doctors and family members were invited to Lakers Dream Camps arranged by the company, the lawsuit said.

WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators hit four national private mortgage insurance companies Thursday with a combined $15.4 million in fines to settle allegations of making improper kickbacks to lenders to steer consumer business to them. The fines, which the companies have agreed to as part of proposed consent orders, could be followed by penalties against lenders as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau continued an investigation into so-called reinsurance kickbacks. "The mortgage insurance business can be lucrative, and our investigation indicates that lenders sought to leverage their control over the business to capture some of those revenues for themselves," said Richard Cordray, the bureau's director.

Medtronic Inc., the world's largest maker of electronic heart-rhythm implants, agreed to pay $40 million to settle civil claims that its Sofamor Danek unit paid kickbacks to get doctors to use the company's spinal products. The U.S. government alleged that Minneapolis-based Medtronic paid kickbacks in the form of sham consulting deals and royalties, as well as lavish trips.

The city's former water superintendent has pleaded guilty to taking kickbacks in return for shipping used city-owned water meters to a recycler. Barry Holland, 60, entered the plea Friday in federal court. Prosecutors say that between 1999 and 2005 he accepted more than $10,000 in cash and $15,000 worth of machinery -- two air motors and a tapping machine. Holland retired in 2006. His attorney, Stewart Katz, declined to comment. As part of his plea agreement, Holland has agreed to repay the city $10,372 and cooperate in the ongoing investigation.

Before dawn one hazy March day in L.A., Armando Granillo pulled his SUV into a Starbucks near MacArthur Park, where he planned to pick up an envelope full of cash from an Arizona real estate broker, federal investigators say. Granillo, a foreclosure specialist at mortgage giant Fannie Mae, expected to drive off with $11,200 - an illegal kickback for steering foreclosure listings to brokers, authorities allege in court records. Granillo would leave in handcuffs. And investigators are now looking into assertions by Granillo and another former Fannie Mae foreclosure specialist that such kickbacks were "a natural part of business" at the government-sponsored housing finance company, as Granillo allegedly told the broker in a wiretapped conversation.

White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles has agreed to pay $14.1 million to settle allegations that it paid illegal kickbacks to physicians to get their patient referrals. The settlement announced Friday by the U.S. Justice Department stemmed from a whistle-blower complaint filed under seal in 2008 by two Los Angeles doctors who objected to the hospital's practices. The two internal-medicine physicians, Hector Luque and Alejandro Gonzalez, will share $2.8 million as their portion of the settlement.

WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators hit four national private mortgage insurance companies Thursday with a combined $15.4 million in fines to settle allegations of making improper kickbacks to lenders to steer consumer business to them. The fines, which the companies have agreed to as part of proposed consent orders, could be followed by penalties against lenders as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau continued an investigation into so-called reinsurance kickbacks. "The mortgage insurance business can be lucrative, and our investigation indicates that lenders sought to leverage their control over the business to capture some of those revenues for themselves," said Richard Cordray, the bureau's director.

A Los Angeles-based hospital chain has agreed to pay the government $16.5 million to settle allegations that its subsidiaries paid illegal kickbacks for patients recruited from among the homeless and provided them unnecessary services in an attempt to defraud Medicare and Medi-Cal, according to court documents. The U.S. attorney's office for the Central District of California said it would drop criminal conspiracy charges filed Thursday against Pacific Health Corp. if payment is completed by March 2017, among other conditions.

WASHINGTON — The General Services Administration's inspector general is investigating possible kickbacks and bribes in an agency already shaken by a scandal over a pricey Las Vegas-area conference, he told a congressional hearing Monday. In response to questions from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Brian Miller said he was investigating "all sorts of improprieties, including bribes, possibly kickbacks. " "We do have other ongoing investigations," Miller said, adding that witnesses told him waste was "widespread" in the GSA's Pacific Rim region, which staged the Las Vegas-area conference for nearly $823,000 in 2010.

A fugitive in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum corruption case said he was in "the jungles of Brazil" and will not return to face trial in an alleged kickback scheme because he shouldn't have been charged. "Let 'em come over here and get me," Tony Estrada, a former Coliseum janitorial contractor who portrays himself as a whistle-blower done wrong, told The Times in a telephone interview. Estrada, who has been charged with embezzlement and conspiracy, said Monday he came forward more than a year ago with canceled checks and other evidence that showed he was making secret payments to the stadium's then-general manager, Patrick Lynch.

A federal grand jury has launched a criminal investigation into allegations that Apria Healthcare Group Inc. gave kickbacks to medical providers in exchange for receiving patient referrals, the home health-care company disclosed. The Costa Mesa company, which supplies oxygen, drug infusion and other services to patients at home, said the grand jury is looking into allegations raised in a whistle-blower lawsuit filed last year in an Atlanta federal court.

A federal jury acquitted a military subcontractor Monday of charges that he paid $26,000 in kickbacks to obtain repair and maintenance work at March Air Force Base in Riverside County and at Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii. After a weeklong trial, the jury also found Jeffrey Bygum, 40, not guilty of conspiracy and witness tampering.

Days after his arrest on multiple corruption charges, the former general manager of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum pleaded guilty to a single criminal count of conflict of interest, avoiding a trial and possible lengthy prison sentence. Patrick T. Lynch will do no prison time as part of Wednesday's plea deal and must repay $385,000 that he allegedly received from a Coliseum contractor as part of a kickback scheme. He also will be placed on three years' probation. Lynch, who faced up to 15 1/2 years behind bars, is one of six men who were charged last week in a sweeping, 29-count indictment alleging bribery, embezzlement, conspiracy and conflict of interest at the historic, taxpayer-owned stadium.