Ex-Warner Chilcott Sales Manager Pleads Guilty to Fraud Charges

A former Warner Chilcott district sales manager pleaded guilty to conspiring to deceive Medicare and private health insurers so they would pay for the firm’s osteoporosis drugs, Actonel and Atelvia.

From 2010 through 2011, Jeffrey Podolsky directed his sales representatives to fill out prior authorizations for physicians who prescribed Actonel and Atelvia using false clinical justifications as to why patients needed the drugs, and submit them to insurance companies, according to the Department of Justice. Podolsky directed his sales staff to submit the authorizations through a website to disguise their identities to insurers.

As a result, insurance companies and Medicare paid at least $200,000 for Actonel and Atelvia prescriptions that were not medically necessary and should not have been paid for.

The case, USA v Podolsky, was heard in U.S. district court in Boston. Podolsky faces a fine and a maximum 10-year prison term. Actavis, which acquired Warner Chilcott in May 2013, did not return a request for comment by press time. — Kellen Owings