Northwestern to pay nearly $3 million to settle claims against cancer researcher

In its second settlement related to research grants in a decade, Northwestern University has agreed to pay nearly $3 million to settle a whistle-blower's allegations that a cancer researcher formerly at the school was using federal grant money for personal travel expenses and sham consulting agreements for family and friends.

Between 2003 and 2010, Dr. Charles L. Bennett, a physician researcher at Northwestern's Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Center for Cancer allegedly misused five grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health that were intended to examine adverse drug events, quality of care for cancer patients and medical therapies for bone cancer and blood disorders.

“Allowing researchers to use federal grant money to pay for personal travel, hotels, and meals, and to hire unqualified friends and relatives as 'consultants' violates the public trust and federal law,” U.S. Attorney Gary Shapiro said in a written statement about the civil case.

A spokesman for Shapiro's office in Chicago said that while the allegations regarding Northwestern have been resolved, the False Claims Act lawsuit against Bennett remains open. Bennett could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Northwestern agreed to pay $2.93 million (PDF) to resolve the allegations without admitting wrongdoing, and said it cooperated with the government investigation as a way of showing that the alleged fraud was not consistent with its “institutional values.”

Although the university denies any wrongdoing by any current employees, “the university was nonetheless disappointed to see the allegations in the complaint because they are at odds with the university's commitment to a culture of compliance in the administration of federal research grants,” an e-mailed statement from the school said.

The university was targeted under the federal False Claims Act, which allows private citizens to bring lawsuits on behalf of the government to recoup government funds in cases of suspected misuse of funds. Whistle-blower and former Lurie employee Melissa Theis filed the lawsuit in 2009 based on personal knowledge from her time at Northwestern. She will receive $498,100 of the settlement for her role in bringing the case.

In 2003, Northwestern University paid $5.5 million to settle a different False Claims Act whistleblower lawsuit in which the university was accused of overstating how much time researchers could spend on grants awarded by the NIH and other entities, resulting in alleged overpayments to the school.

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