Guest Profile
Chris Reidel
I never imagined I would become a fraud fighter. My closest friends, also
successful businessmen, despised anyone who sued corporations—particularly
whistleblowers. This held throughout corporate America. Was I about to become
something they despised?
After much research and reflection, it appeared to me that the only way to save
taxpayers from being ripped off — and, in the case of Hunter, to save the business itself
— was to stop the Blood Brothers’ frauds. The only way to potentially do that was
through a whistleblower, or Qui-tam, lawsuit.
But did I really want to file suit against several of the biggest laboratory
companies engaging in these practices?
The bigger question: Did I want to see taxpayers in California, and throughout
the nation, continue to be ripped off by these companies to the tune of billions of
dollars, as they defrauded State and Federal governments?
When I looked at it that way, I became a man on a mission. A mission that
continues today.
Blood Money is the story of how a Silicon Valley CEO became a fraud fighter. It is an
insider’s look at the David vs. Goliath struggle between a whistleblower seeking to
save his company and stop taxpayers from being ripped-off, and healthcare
companies engaged in massive fraud. Affecting millions of taxpayers, it is one of the
biggest “hidden” stories in the healthcare world — until now.
Imagine running a successful business in highest integrity — until squeezed out by a
pair of companies engaging in one of the greatest predatory pricing schemes in the
medical world. What do you do? Such was Chris Riedel’s dilemma, which led him to
become one of the top medical whistleblowers and fraud fighters in U.S. history,
which he chronicles in his riveting true-crime book, Blood Money.
Chris ran a highly regarded Northern California lab testing company, Hunter
Labs, until falling to the nefarious scheme of the “Blood Brothers,” Quest and
LabCorp, the world’s top medical test labs. Their scheme, which involved loss-leader
pricing to doctors to gain their business, and then overcharging Medicare, Medicaid
and Medi-Cal as much as 40-fold, has cost taxpayers billions of dollars during the
past 15 years — and forced higher quality, but smaller labs like Hunter, either to
fold or be absorbed by them.
In Blood Money, Riedel exposes the underworld of medical fraud in unsparing
terms. He begins with the Blood Brothers’ fraud against Hunter Labs and others,
which pushed Chris and his attorney partners, Niall McCarthy (son of former Calif.
Lieutenant Governor Leo McCarthy) and Justin Berger into action. Chris and his
attorneys blew the whistle, and won a landmark $300 million in settlements for the
State of California and taxpayers in a highly publicized 2011 case.
Since then, his efforts have expanded into becoming a full-fledged medical
fraud fighter against other lab testing companies defrauding taxpayers. Chris won or
settled cases in Florida, Michigan, Virginia, Nevada, Georgia, California and, most
recently in November, a $28 million settlement against Boston Heart Diagnostics
(see attached article). He and his team have worked both with and independent of
the DOJ on 27 cases. They have another half dozen cases open.
Chris is a fraud fighter of highest esteem, a whistleblower not only going
after medical fraud, but making sure the taxpayer doesn’t get ripped off any more. In
all, he and his partners have won cases totaling $553 million, the vast majority of
which went back to state and federal government treasury coffers.
Likewise, his open, deeply honest and often blunt writing in Blood Money
makes him a voice to a wide reading audience – most of whom have undergone
medical lab tests – would love to hear from. In Blood Money, he takes us on a
compelling, sometimes high-drama adventure through the fight to survive vs. Quest
and LabCorp’s practices, and the dire retribution he faced from these multi-billion
dollar Goliaths — not to mention being weeks away from professional and personal
bankruptcy, and destroying the life he and Marcia had built. He chronicles the
landmark 2011 California case, the many he’s pursued since, and how fraud fighting
has changed his life. Furthermore, he describes the world of the whistleblower in
detail and offers universal tips to those considering taking such action, no matter
the industry.
