Asfora Wilson (Wilson Asfora)

Biography

2021: $4.4 million fine for kickbacks for Medtronic medical equipment deliveries

In early May 2021, the court sentenced neurosurgeon Wilson Asfora for receiving kickbacks for the supply of Medtronic medical equipment. The doctor and two medical equipment distributors he owned - Medical Designs and Sicage - agreed to pay $4.4 million to settle the charges.

For nearly a decade, Asfora has been involved in three fraudulent schemes that allowed him to make additional profits from using more than a dozen Medtronic devices in his medical procedures. Medical Designs and Sicage paid Asfor the use of appropriate devices in spinal surgery, and Medical Designs acted as a distributor, reselling devices from other manufacturers and sharing profits with Asfora. Asfora also requested and received kickbacks from Medtronic in exchange for the use of infusion pumps SynchroMed II. Medtronic paid kickbacks through the Carnaval Brazilian Grill restaurant, which Asfora owned with his wife, in the form of generous lunches for Asfora and his friends, colleagues and business partners.

Neurosurgeon in the United States will pay $4.4 million for kickbacks when supplying Medtronic medical equipment

Physicians who take kickbacks and perform unnecessary surgeries put their patients at unnecessary risk and increase overall health care costs, said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton. - We will continue to hold doctors and manufacturers of medical equipment accountable for illegal financial arrangements that undermine the work of federal health programs.

Medical Designs and Sicage also have to pay an additional $100,000 in penalties for violating the open payment program because they did not inform Medicare and Medicaid centers of illegal payments made by Wilson Asfora. According to the verdict, Asfora himself and his Medical Designs and Sicage companies will be excluded from federal health programs for six years.^[1]

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