The owner of a defunct Hempfield drug testing lab who admitted to paying kickbacks to a Kentucky doctor for referrals will serve 60 days in jail.
William Hughes, 74, was also ordered by U.S. District Judge David S. Cercone on Tuesday to serve an additional year of home detention and forfeit more than $750,000 in previously seized assets.
Hughes pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to pay unlawful kickbacks. He owned and operated Universal Oral Fluid Labs, a clinical drug testing laboratory located on Willow Crossing Road.
According to federal prosecutors, Hughes had an arrangement with Kentucky physician Dr. Varanise Booke to pay her to refer patients to his testing lab for services.
Between September 2012 and August 2013, the government said Hughes’ lab obtained more than $1.6 million from the Kentucky Medicaid Program based on those illegal referrals.
Booker, the prosecution said, then received $843,000 in kickbacks.
Her case is still pending.
Hughes is also ordered to pay restitution to the Kentucky Medicaid Program totaling more than $1.6 million.
He initially denied the charges. “I did nothing wrong. I had nothing to do with that,” Hughes said in 2018. “In my 50 years in business, I never even had a sanction, citation or indictment and not many people can say that.”
