barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for ten years. This was the first time in which the little-used "clawback" provision under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was used against an individual by the SEC. The SEC continued its investigations even after it in 2008 settled legal actions against both UnitedHealth Group itself and its former general counsel. Medicare overbilling lawsuit A whistleblower lawsuit, filed in 2011, charges UnitedHealth Group's data analytics division with assisting in defrauding Medicare by boosting risk adjustment scores from Medicare Advantage companies. The suit alleges that UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Ingenix (now OptumInsight) "defrauded the United States of hundreds of millions — and likely billions — of dollars." Former UnitedHealth executive Benjamin Poehling brought the suit under the False Claims Act. The government said it would proceed on claims against two health care companies, UnitedHealth and its Texas subsidiary WellMed Medical Management. In February 2017, a federal judge unsealed the suit after the Department of Justice announced it would join the case. Richard Cole, and others v. United Healthcare On April 29, 2019, Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, a cancer survivor, recused himself from a case against United Healthcare, stating that the company's denial of treatment was "immoral and barbaric", and that his opinions regarding the company would prevent him from "deciding this case fairly and impartially." PacifiCare fine in California In 2008, the California Department of Insurance took action against UnitedHealthcare's subsidiary PacifiCare Health Systems, acquired in 2005, ultimately fining UnitedHealthcare around $173 million for an estimated over 900,000 violations of the Unfair Insurance Practices Act; by 2019, the case was still being disputed in court, with the possibility of affirming $91 million in penalties. CMS fine over Medicare Part D In 2017, CMS fined UnitedHealthcare after discovering issues in Medicare Part D leading to delays or denials in a 2016 audit. New Jersey fine in 2018 The New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance fined UnitedHealthcare $2.5 million due to various compliance issues; this was the largest fine against a licensee in nine years. Pennsylvania UnitedHealthcare assessed $1 million penalty for claims payment violations. Northern California United Behavioral Health sued over $5 million in denied claims. Policy Research ownership The Lewin Group is a policy research and consulting firm that provides an economic analysis of health care and human