A jury recently convicted the former CEO of a medical device company in connection to the company's creation and sale of a dummy medical device part that was implanted in patients, the Justice Department said March 6.
Laura Perryman was the CEO of Stimwave, which manufactured and distributed implantable neurostimulation devices. The company was founded in 2010 to offer non-opioid alternatives to chronic pain management. Federal investigators claim Ms. Perryman helped design, manufacture and market a nonfunctional part for a chronic pain device from about 2017 to 2020.
The product, called StimQ PNS System, is a $16,000 neurostimulator medical device that targets peripheral nerves outside the spinal cord. Physicians struggled to comfortably fit the receiver component, called the pink stylet, so Stimwave released a smaller white stylet — a plastic part the company sold to physicians for about $16,000 for each implantation.
"To perpetuate the lie that the White Stylet was functional, [Ms.] Perryman oversaw training that suggested to doctors that the White Stylet was a 'receiver,' when in fact it was made entirely of plastic, contained no copper, and therefore had no conductivity," the Justice Department said in a statement.
After an 11-day trial, Ms. Perryman was convicted of one count of healthcare fraud, which has a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.