A tax services provider”™s complaint led to a $6.2 million settlement that a Massachusetts-based medical imaging company and its former corporate parent will pay after allegedly skipping on New York City and state taxes over a five-year period, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman recently announced.
Schneiderman claimed that Lantheus Medical Imaging Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. knowingly failed to pay more than $2.2 million in New York state business franchise taxes, New York City corporation taxes and Metropolitan Transportation Authority surcharges from 2002 to 2006, when Lantheus was known as Bristol-Myers Squibb Medical Imaging. He said the company derived substantial revenues from its sales of medical imaging products to hospitals, clinics and other facilities in New York and from sales-related training and servicing activities during that period.
The attorney general”™s office investigated the company after an unnamed tax services provider in 2012 filed a whistleblower complaint against Lantheus in state Supreme Court under the New York False Claims Act. The law allows whistleblowers and prosecutors to take legal action against companies or individuals that defraud the government. Persons found liable under the False Claims Act must pay triple damages, penalties and attorneys”™ fees. Whistleblowers may be eligible to receive up to 30 percent of any money recovered by the government as a result of information they provide.
Schneiderman said the tax professional who blew the whistle on Lantheus will receive $1,137,815 from the state’s settlement proceeds. The city of New York will receive $693,143.
“Lantheus”™ failure to pay these taxes was indefensible,” Schneiderman said in a press release.
David Caputo, an attorney at Kline & Specter, P.C., the law firm representing the whistleblower, said the settlement “demonstrates the enormous good that private whistleblowers, their counsel and our partners in the government can accomplish together for the taxpaying public. It took courage for our client to come forward, and we applaud the Attorney General”™s Office for acting on our client”™s information as promptly and effectively as it did in this case.”
Schneiderman said his office was assisted in the case by the state Department of Taxation and Finance and New York City”™s Department of Finance and Office of the Corporation Counsel.
