The 2010 anti-kickback case and later consulting payments

analysisOn 7 December 2010 the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey filed a criminal complaint charging Exactech with conspiring to violate the federal anti-kickback statute by entering, from 2002 to late 2008, into consulting agreements with orthopaedic surgeons designed in part to induce them to use its hip and knee products. The company entered a 12-month deferred prosecution agreement under a federal monitor, paid $2.99 million to settle related civil claims that its marketing caused false claims to Medicare, and signed a five-year Corporate Integrity Agreement with the HHS Office of Inspector General; its board authorised Greenberg Traurig to sign. ^{1 2}

qualification

A deferred prosecution agreement is not a conviction: the complaint was to be dismissed if the company complied for 12 months. The civil settlement resolved government claims without a judgment.

response

In the agreement the company undertook to acknowledge responsibility for its behaviour, to continue cooperating with the prosecutors and other agencies and to carry out further remediation; the prosecutors acknowledged that neither the agreement nor the criminal complaint alleged that the company's conduct had adversely affected patient health or patient care.

outcome

The record does not contain the dismissal order; the Settlement Trust's 2026 complaint refers to the agreement as having expired.

analysisThe same day Douglas Donofrio, then director of sales for the Northeast region, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the statute, admitting illegal financial arrangements with surgeons and inflated work reports used to justify consulting payments, and agreed to repay a $50,000 bonus. ¹

qualification

The plea concerns the individual; the charge carried a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

outcome

The release gave a sentencing date of 14 March; the sentence is not in the record.

analysisThe Settlement Trust's 2026 complaint alleges that consulting payments continued after the agreement expired, peaking in 2018 and rising again for shoulder products from 2021, with nearly $60 million paid to physicians from 2017 to 2023, and that TPG and Jeffrey Binder used such arrangements to encourage the use of Exactech products or to discourage complaints. ¹

qualification

These are allegations in the Settlement Trust's complaint, which was pending in the Delaware Court of Chancery in October 2026; no court has ruled on them. The payment totals come from the complaint's reading of public payment data, which was not retrieved.