Pfizer Agrees to Pay $59.7 Million to Settle Charges of Fraud by Its Acquired Company, Biohaven Pharmaceuticals
Pfizer will pay $59.7 million to resolve charges that a company it acquired, Biohaven Pharmaceuticals, defrauded Medicare and other healthcare programs by paying kickbacks to doctors to prescribe the migraine drug Nurtec ODT, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday.
The Justice Department alleged that from March 1, 2020, to September 30, 2022, Biohaven Pharmaceuticals violated the federal False Claims Act by providing speaker honoraria and meals at high-end restaurants to doctors to induce them to prescribe Nurtec more often. The government claimed that some speaker programs were attended multiple times by the same doctors, resulting in no educational benefit, or attended by doctors’ spouses, family members, and colleagues who had no educational need to be there.
Pfizer acquired Biohaven Pharmaceuticals in October 2022 for $11.5 billion and had ended the Nurtec speaker programs. The company did not admit wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.
“We are pleased to put this legacy matter behind us, so that we can continue to focus on the needs of patients,” Pfizer said in a statement.
The settlement resolves an August 2021 lawsuit filed in the Rochester, New York federal court by Patricia Frattasio, a former Biohaven neuroscience sales specialist, who will receive about $8.4 million from the settlement. About $41.8 million will go to the federal government and $9.5 million will go to state Medicaid programs.