A former med tech CEO is facing jail time for allegedly bribing VA doctors across the country to promote its skinlike dressing for diabetes-related foot sores, marking a dark chapter in the company's legal saga.
Advanced BioHealing's ex-leader Todd Clawson recently pleaded guilty to one count of a bribery in a Seattle federal court before U.S. Magistrate Judge James Donohue. Federal prosecutors claimed that Clawson and others in the company paid kickbacks to VA podiatrists and doctors in Washington, California, Arizona, Ohio, Texas and Georgia to talk up its "biologic" wound dressing device, Dermagraft.
Clawson and his team conspired to "defraud the United States by impeding and impairing the governmental functions of the VA, including those intended to regulate the ethical practice of physicians working for the VA," prosecutors said, as quoted by seattlepi.com. Advanced BioHealing got a large federal contract for the product in late 2008 after Clawson started at the company, and the bribery started soon thereafter.
Clawson and others flew a Phoenix VA doctor to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, for a fishing trip in August 2010. Clawson promised another VA doctor Def Leppard tickets, a Wyoming fishing trip and Las Vegas entertainment, according to the seattlepi.com story. The company flew at least three doctors to Seattle in 2010 to promote its devices.
But the bribery didn't stop there. Advanced BioHealing paid doctors as much as $3,000 to come to "speaking engagements" at dinners paid for by the company and attended by VA staff. "These events usually took place at a restaurant where the company, and in some instances the VA speaker, would solicit VA personnel to attend, the company would pay for their meals," Assistant U.S. Attorney David Reese Jennings said in court papers seen by seattlepi.com.
Advanced BioHealing also gave VA doctors $1,500 a day to let sales reps follow them as they treated patients at VA facilities. Physicians received $3,000 to give companies "sales training" to Advanced BioHealing staff and $2,000 for serving on an "advisory board," according to the court charging papers.
Clawson, who left the company in August 2012, is scheduled to be sentenced on June 10 by U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik. The fraud allegations against Advanced BioHealing do not extend past when Clawson made his exit, seattlepi.com reports.
- read the seattlepi.com story