Labcorp to pay $19M to whistleblowers to settle 'blood draw' kickback lawsuit

Two whistleblowers from Florence, South Carolina have settled their 10-year lawsuit against Laboratory Corporation of America (Labcorp) for $19 million, announced Pittsburgh-based law firm Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Basick & Raspanti.

Scarlett Lutz, owner of a medical billing services company, and Kayla Webster, a nurse working for a local family practitioner, alleged that Labcorp had participated in a complex health care fraud scheme to violate the False Claims Act by providing blood draws to their health care provider customers, who were receiving cash kickbacks from two other labs named in the suit.

“These whistleblowers are hard-working people from a small town in South Carolina, not highly paid laboratory-industry executives,” attorney Pamela Coyne Brecht said in a press release. “Our entire legal team … is so very proud to have prevailed as Kayla’s and Scarlett’s advocates on behalf of US taxpayers who fund the Medicare program, which too often falls prey to kickback schemes.”