Fen-Phen Lawyer Indicted for Insurance Fraud in Kentucky

An attorney who was disbarred after representing clients in a multimillion-dollar diet drug settlement has been indicted on a fraudulent insurance acts charge.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that a Fayette County grand jury charged Melbourne Mills Jr. on a charge that stems from an incident on or about Aug. 11, 2003.

Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Larson said he couldn’t comment.

Senior U.S. District Judge Joseph Hood said in March that Mills committed “material misrepresentations or omissions of fact” in a 2003 application to a company that issued a liability policy to his firm and paid for his defense in a lawsuit brought by his former fen-phen clients.

Mills was acquitted of criminal charges in the fen-phen case but the state bar association voted to disbar him. A judge ruled in 2006 that Mills and two other lawyers had to pay $42 million to clients they had swindled in the diet-drug settlement.