North Carolina will get nearly $1.2 million from a $612 million settlement with pharmaceutical giant Amgen over fraudulent Medicaid claims, kickbacks and other misrepresentations.

As part of the settlement with federal prosecutors, the California drug company pleaded guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor count of promoting an anemia drug for higher doses than it was approved.

The federal settlement ended an eight-year investigation based on 10 whistleblower cases filed in New York, Massachusetts and Washington state.

North Carolina's portion of the settlement was reached by the N.C. Attorney General's Medicaid Investigations Division and the N.C. Division of Medical Assistance.

North Carolina will receive nearly $900,000 as part of a settlement with a chain of nursing homes accused of accepting kickbacks from a drug company.

Mariner Health Care was alleged to have received millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical company, Omnicare, in exchange for directing its patients to buy the company's prescription drugs.

State Attorney General Roy Cooper joined the federal government and other states in the investigation which resulted in a $14 million settlement. North Carolina's share will go to state and federal Medicaid efforts.

The N.C. Attorney General's Medicaid Investigations Unit helped with the investigation. The unit has recouped more than $400 million over the past decade.
 

State regulators are investigating two companies run by a deceased Harnett County businessman who has been accused of running a Ponzi scheme.

The administrator for the estate of Raymond Mulkey Jr. has notified the state Department of Insurance about questionable data that was uncovered during a review of Mulkey’s estate, said department spokeswoman Kristin Milam.

The department's Agent Services Division is conducting audits of two of Mulkey's insurance agencies, Mulkey & Associates and Southeastern Insurance Services.

Those audits are ongoing, Milam said.

Mulkey, 63, was found dead in his home in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Aug. 16. The Horry County coroner has said a cause of death has yet to be determined.

Since Mulkey’s death several small North Carolina banks have discovered apparent fraud by borrowers on loan applications and paperwork involving the extension of loans.
 

Two more defendants in the Penland real estate scheme have reached consent agreements that bars them from working in North Carolina under certain circumstances.

A total of six people have now entered consent judgments in the case.

Penland was a real estate venture in Mitchell County that used inflated appraisals to entice consumers into borrowing millions of dollars to purchase property. The Village of Penland was conceived as a 2,000-lot residential and retail development in the western North Carolina mountains.

Under a consent judgment entered by the court on Thursday, Michael Yeomans, a Florida developer, will pay $400,000 in restitution and be barred from developing, marketing or selling real estate in North Carolina if the project involves deceptive appraisals, sales incentives of more than $100 and a host of other conditions.

The other defendant signing a consent agreement was A. Greg Anderson, a North Carolina appraiser.

According to Attorney General Roy Cooper's office, Anderson conducted appraisals that substantially overstated the value of property sold to consumers as part of the Village of Penland scheme.

Under a consent judgment entered last month, Anderson is barred from working as an appraiser in North Carolina while his license is suspended.

A Raleigh man has been arrested and charged with canceling his employees health insurance without proper notice.

Paul Joseph Stafford, 43, of 6909 Spring Dr., has been charged with one count of willful termination of a group health plan.

Investigators with the N.C. Department of Insurance allege that Stafford canceled his employees’ Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina and UnitedHealthcare group health insurance policies without providing the required 45-day notice.

Stafford was the owner of Ideas Architecture, Inc. and New Ideas, Inc. Both companies have gone out of business.
 

A father and son team of cable-TV barons convicted of fraud in 2004 aren't leaving their federal prison cells in Butner any time soon.

John Rigas, founder of Adelphia Communications, must serve his sentence of 12 years, a federal appeals court in New York ruled today. His son, Timothy Rigas, must serve 17 years.

The appeals court found the sentences were reasonable and don't "shock the conscience," Bloomberg News reported.

The court also rejected the request for a new trial from John Rigas, 84, and Timothy Rigas, 53.

Jurors had found that the Rigases lied about looting millions of dollars from Adelphia and using the money to buy land and other perks for themselves.

The end has apparently come in the Leesville Road Middle School embezzlement case.

Kristie Mitchell, the school's former bookkeeper, got a plea deal earlier this month in which her felony embezzlement charge was reduced to a misdemeanor willful failure to discharge duties. She got a 45-day suspended sentence and a year of probation.

At one point, she was charged with stealing nearly $21,000 from money parents deposited for field trips, athletic events and other school activities. She gave a check of $7,000 to the school system to cover the amount that school officials say "they were able to fully document."'

UPDATE

School officials say the money was returned to the school. 

Bernard Madoff isn't dying of cancer in Butner, according to federal prison officials who dismissed a published report about his being terminally ill.

The New York Post reported today that Madoff, who is serving 150 years at a federal prison in Butner after pleading guilty to defrauding investors of more than $65 billion, does not have much longer to live.

But a statement from the Federal Bureau of Prisons says the rumors of Madoff, 71, having pancreatic cancer aren't true, Bloomberg News reports.