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kingsley r. chin spine surgeon
Dr. Kingsley R. Chin

By Fred Schulte, Kaiser Health News

A Broward orthopedic surgeon and designer of costly spinal surgery implants was arrested Tuesday and charged with paying millions of dollars in kickbacks and bribes to surgeons who agreed to use his company’s devices.

Dr. Kingsley R. Chin, 57, of Fort Lauderdale, is the founder, chief executive officer and owner of SpineFrontier, a device company based in Malden, Massachusetts. He and the company’s chief financial officer, Aditya Humad, 36, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, were each indicted on one count of conspiring to violate federal anti-kickback laws, six counts of violating the kickback statute and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, officials said.

surgeons
Dr. Kingsley R. Chin
 

 

Hollywood orthopedic surgeon Dr. Kingsley R. Chin was little more than a decade out of Harvard Medical School when sales of his spine surgical implants took off.

Chin has patented more than 40 pieces of such hardware, including doughnut-shaped plastic cages, titanium screws and other products used to repair spines — generating $100 million for his company SpineFrontier, according to government officials.

Yet SpineFrontier’s success arose not from the quality of its goods, these officials say, but because it paid kickbacks to surgeons who agreed to implant the highly profitable devices in hundreds of patients.

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