New Jersey Medical School to Pay $2-Million to Settle Fraud Case

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey has agreed to pay $2-million to settle civil charges resulting from a decade-long scheme to double-bill Medicaid and Medicare.

The university has already paid back the $5-million in overcharges to the federal health-care programs, reported The Star-Ledger, in Newark, N.J.

In 2005 the university faced a criminal complaint in the fraud scheme, leading to two years of federal oversight. The civil settlement shows that a former faculty member, Steven Simring, told federal prosecutors about the double-billing scheme, which lasted from 1993 to 2004, according to the newspaper.

He will receive $801,000 of the $2-million settlement for alerting prosecutors to the fraud, the newspaper reported.

Since the scheme was uncovered, the university has undergone a leadership shake-up and is now committed to “exemplary corporate citizenship,” a university spokesman, Jeffrey Tolvin, told the newspaper.

The university has been entangled in a variety of scandals in the past decade, including issuance of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts and creating a no-work job for a powerful state senator. —Austin Wright