The chief financial officer of a group of pain management clinics in Maryland pleaded guilty earlier this week to soliciting and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from a laboratory testing company, the FBI announced.

Vic Wadhwa, of Frederick Md., pleaded guilty to arranging a deal with a lab company in New Jersey to receive nearly half a million dollars in kickbacks for sending thousands of patients' urine samples to the lab for testing, the FBI said. Mr. Wadhwa faces a maximum of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

According to the federal government, the pain management clinics required patients taking pain medications to submit urine samples as a way of monitoring levels of medication in their bodies. This generated hundreds of urine samples a month, the FBI said, which ranged in cost from $200 to $2,000 to test.

In his plea deal, Mr. Wadhwa said that in March 2011, he and some of his colleagues decided to start using a laboratory testing company in New Jersey for these patient samples, after learning the company was willing to pay kickbacks to facilities for sending specimens. Mr. Wadhwa said he negotiated an agreement that said the lab company would pay kickbacks equal to half of its profit for every urine sample submitted for testing.

From March 2011 to August 2012, the clinics sent samples to the lab company, with the lab receiving more than $4 million from private insurers, Medicare and the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program, according to the FBI. Between July 2011 and August 2012, the lab company paid the clinics a almost $1.4 million in kickbacks, with Mr. Wadhwa receiving nearly $460,000 of that.

A sentencing hearing for Mr. Wadhwa is scheduled for April 2015. The investigation is ongoing, the FBI said. An attorney was not listed for Mr. Wadhwa.

Kendal Gapinski