Allergan PLC’s Warner Chilcott unit will pay $125 million and plead guilty to felony health-care fraud charges stemming from an investigation into its marketing that included improper payments to doctors, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Warner Chilcott has agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges that the company paid kickbacks to physicians to entice them to prescribe its drugs, manipulated insurance companies into paying for prescriptions, and made unsubstantiated claims about its drugs. It will pay a criminal fine of $23 million and a civil settlement of $102 million.
Several individuals, including a physician and former district managers, have also pleaded guilty or been charged in connection with the investigation, the Justice Department said. Former Warner Chilcott President W. Carl Reichel was also arrested Thursday on one count of conspiring to pay kickbacks to physicians, the Justice Department said.
The suit alleged that the company AGN, -0.50% engaged in fraudulent marketing of several drugs from 2003 through 2011, including the ulcerative-colitis treatment Asacol, osteoporosis treatment Actonel, and birth-control pill Loestrin.
The lawsuit alleged the company paid doctors speaking fees to induce them to prescribe the drugs, and promoted uses for drugs that weren’t approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which caused government health programs to pay for prescriptions that shouldn’t have been paid.