Ja-born doctor reaches settlement with US justice department in civil case

JAMAICAN-BORN doctor Kingsley Chin, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and has a medical device manufacturing company among other entities, has reached a settlement with the United States’ Department of Justice (DOJ) in a civil case brought against him by the department.

Under the terms of the settlement, Dr Chin will pay a fine of US$10,000, as well as US$30,000 over the next five years and forfeit 50 per cent of his companies to the department for the next five years.

The Federal authorities had accused him of paying out kickbacks to other doctors amounting to some US$8 million, to have these doctors recommend the use of his spinal devices manufactured by his companies while the companies made over $100 million.

The DOJ insisted that such kickbacks ran counter to the law.

Chin is still facing criminal charges, brought against him by the justice department, but motions have been filed by his attorneys to have them dismissed, as they believe that the criminal charges were aimed at forcing Chin to reach a settlement on the civil matter.

Chin is one of the leading manufacturers of spinal devices to aid people with spinal issues, holding over 100 patents on such devices that are used worldwide.

Insisting that he did nothing wrong, Dr Chin said that the practice of using other doctors as consultants to test devices was standard in the industry between 2013 and 2015, as many manufacturers of medical devices have had doctors as consultants who would give feedback to the companies.

According to Chin, such consultants were opinion leaders who charged a fee at rates that were acceptable.

He said that when the practice changed in 2018, the federal government began going after companies and would scrutinise their books to see what discrepancies in payments might have occurred.

“Everybody was going to be hit after the clampdown,” he said.

BLINDSIDED BY THE CRIMINAL COMPLAINT

Dr Chin said that his legal troubles stemmed from three doctors who he fired who became whistleblowers to the government.

He feels that one of the errors he made was not having an in-house attorney to oversee compliance.

Also, he believes that the federal authorities had brought the charges of bribery, money laundering and violations of the anti-kickback law because his companies did not have all the documents to match up with the payments, but insisted that this should fall to the doctors who bill his companies.

He has long disputed the US Federal case against him, saying that he and his companies have been caught up in a push by the federal government to crackdown on medical companies using doctors as consultants.

Chin said that he had the civil case with the federal government, but was blindsided by the criminal complaint later unsealed against him.

“We basically had an agreement to settle the civil case, but the government made a demand that I was not prepared to live with so we opted to go to trial,” he said.

Chin, in an exclusive interview with The Gleaner at the time, pointed out that about 15 federal marshalls turned up at his house early one morning with guns drawn to take him into custody.

“In civil cases this does not happen. The criminal complaint caught myself and my lawyers completely by surprise. In any case, this is normally handled by the suspect being asked to come to the police station and turn himself in,” he said.

He was taken to the police station and released on a US$ 1 million bail.

He was arraigned in Boston where the allegations are said to have occurred, as his companies are located in that eastern state.

WHO IS KINGSLEY CHIN?

But who is Kingsley Chin?

He hails from Buff Bay in Portland, attended Titchfield High School and played daCosta Cup for that school. He was selected to the Jamaica Juvenile Football Team and later earned a soccer scholarship to Columbia University in New York in 1984.

At Columbia, he became the first black president of an Ivy League school senior class, a distinction he still holds. He was also selected as the Ivy League Soccer Player of the Year in 1989.

Recalling his upbringing, Chin said that his mother worked in a supermarket to be able to provide for his education, something she was invested in.

After graduating from Columbia with an engineering degree, Chin worked for a couple of years before going on to Harvard Medical School.

An orthopaedic surgeon, Chin said he decided to form his own company to manufacture medical spinal devices to revolutionise the field. According to him, he currently holds about 100 patents.

In retrospect, he thinks that he should have settled the civil case which has been ongoing for some two years, but he was not prepared to live with one of the conditions that the government attached.

He pointed out that an agreement had been reached on how much he would have to pay, but he just could not live with the condition of a 50-per-cent stake being attached to his companies.

Dr. Chin told The Gleaner that hehad no consultants for the past four to five years.

“I gambled to go to court on the civil matter and it turned into a criminal complaint,” he said.

Arising from this criminal complaint the federal authorities went to another extreme, he noted.

“I was prepared to fight the charges that have been brought. I felt confident in our case. There was no benefit to me and my companies to have doctors who plead guilty to overbilling,” he said. “They are holding us for such overbilling when it should not be. I don’t control what doctors bill or what they do.”

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