- Office of the Attorney General
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Sydney Weiser, Deputy Communications Director
BOSTON — Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell today announced that her office, along with 39 other states and the federal government, has reached a settlement with Abbott Laboratories (Abbott) to settle allegations that the company caused false claims to be submitted to federal and state programs arising from its failure to manufacture certain powder infant formula and nutritional therapy products in compliance with state and federal requirements.
As a result of the settlement, Abbott – an Illinois-based health care company that manufactures and sells infant formula and nutritional therapy products – will pay nearly $385 million to the federal government and to the participating states. Massachusetts will receive $1.9 million from the settlement, which includes funding that will be paid back to MassHealth, as well as funds associated with the Commonwealth’s payments for the formula through the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition (WIC) program. Notably, Massachusetts is the only state that supplements the federal WIC program with additional Commonwealth funds.
"Parents should never have to question whether the food they are feeding their babies is safe, and the companies that produce that food have a responsibility to meet the rigorous safety standards designed to protect our youngest and most vulnerable residents,” said AG Campbell. “Abbott’s failure to maintain its formula in compliance with state and federal regulations not only put families at risk but resulted in the Commonwealth paying for formula that did not meet key safety standards. This settlement reinforces that companies providing essential products to Massachusetts families must put safety and compliance first.”
These allegations were the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan by a whistleblower. In December 2025, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office (AGO) and five other states intervened in the lawsuit and sued Abbott.
The lawsuit alleged that, from January 2018 through December 2022, Abbott failed to manufacture certain powder infant formula and nutrition formula in compliance with federal and state statutory, regulatory, and contractual requirements. Specifically, the federal government and the states claimed that Abbott knowingly manufactured infant formula purchased with taxpayer dollars in an environment that put the products at an unacceptable risk of contamination and significantly impaired the products’ reliability, quality, and safety. The federal and state governments alleged that Abbott failed to maintain its manufacturing equipment, failed to control the presence of water that put the products at increased risk of microorganism contamination, and, in certain instances, failed to disclose test results indicating the presence of microorganism contamination when responding to requests from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during 2019 and 2022 inspections at Abbott’s Sturgis, Michigan facility.
The AGO alleged that Abbott’s misrepresentations caused the WIC program and state Medicaid programs, including MassHealth, to pay for powder infant formula and nutritional products manufactured at these facilities despite the products’ failure to meet statutory, regulatory, and contractual requirements.
In Massachusetts, this matter was handled by Assistant Attorney General Michelle Heyer of the AGO’s False Claims Division and Assistant Attorney General Molly Mahan and Senior Data Scientist Will Welsh of the AGO’s Medicaid Fraud Division.
The AGO’s Medicaid Fraud Division is a Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, annually certified by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to investigate and prosecute health care providers who defraud the state’s Medicaid program, MassHealth. The Medicaid Fraud Division also has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute complaints of abuse, neglect and financial exploitation of residents in long-term care facilities and of Medicaid patients in any health care setting. Individuals may file a MassHealth fraud complaint or report cases of abuse or neglect of Medicaid patients or long-term care residents by visiting the AGO’s website.
The Massachusetts Medicaid Fraud Division receives 75 percent of its funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under a grant award totaling $6,458,176 for federal fiscal year 2026. The remaining 25 percent, totaling $2,152,724 for FY 2026, is funded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
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