WASHINGTON — A federal court in Massachusetts has sentenced Aditya Humad, the Indian-origin former Chief Financial Officer of medical device firm SpineFrontier, Inc., to four months in prison for his role in a multi-million-dollar healthcare kickback scheme.
Humad, a 41-year-old resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was sentenced by the US District Court following a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute. In addition to his prison term, District Court rulings require Humad to complete one year of supervised release and pay a $9,500 criminal fine.
Fictitious Consulting Contracts for Real Profits
Court records show that between 2013 and 2019, Humad collaborated with SpineFrontier’s Founder, President, and CEO, Kingsley R. Chin, to direct over $540,000 in illegal bribes to orthopedic surgeons and neurosurgeons. The kickbacks were concealed as payments for technical consulting services, with contractual rates ranging between $250 and $1,000 per hour.
In reality, federal prosecutors proved that surgeons performed little to no actual consulting work. Instead, the payments served as direct financial incentives for doctors to select SpineFrontier’s spinal implant products for complex surgical procedures—including operations funded by taxpayer-backed programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Health Administration.
The corrupt arrangement yielded millions of dollars in product revenue for SpineFrontier while illegally compromising medical objectivity.
Federal Regulators Clamp Down on Healthcare Corruption
"This sentence is the culmination of years of dogged pursuit of SpineFrontier, its executives, Aditya Humad and Kingsley Chin, and multiple bribe-taking doctors," stated United States Attorney Leah B. Foley. "In criminal and civil proceedings, we have recovered more than $4 million from these executives, their companies, and the physicians who took their bribes. Let these resolutions serve as notice that no matter how long it takes, and how sophisticated the scheme, we will crack down on healthcare fraud offenses."
Echoing those sentiments, Roberto Coviello, Special Agent in Charge at the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), emphasized that the bribery scheme compromised patient protection standards.
"This corporate scheme sought to corruptly influence surgeons by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to induce the use of SpineFrontier's medical devices," Coviello said, noting that Humad’s actions directly undermined statutory safeguards created to preserve the integrity of federal healthcare programs.
Both criminal enforcement and civil recovery actions tied to SpineFrontier and its leadership remain part of a broader federal push to purge illicit kickbacks from the medical device industry.
