On Monday, DaVita HealthCare Partners said it will pay up to $495 million to settle a whistle-blower lawsuit accusing it of deliberately wasting medicines to get higher Medicare payments.

The Denver based company said it has now settled its third whistle-blower lawsuit since 2012, with payouts of nearly $1 billion in total.

The civil suit, filed in Atlanta in 2011, revolves around a claim by Dr. Alon J. Vainer and nurse Daniel D. Barbir, both of them worked for DaVita.

According to the lawsuit, both of them noticed that DaVita was throwing out good medicine that it then billed Medicare and Medicaid for.

Vainer and Barbir, who will be paid up to $135 million as part of the settlement said in court that they questioned DaVita about the waste of medicine.

The duo even claimed the company submitted fraudulent claims for reimbursement between 2003 and 2010.

Lin Wood, the Atlanta-based attorney for the plaintiffs, and co-counsel Marlan B. Wilbanks did not showed up for giving any comment on Monday.

DaVita Kidney Care CEO Javier Rodriguez said, “Our 67,000 teammates across 11 countries look forward to putting this behind us. We can now renew our focus on collaborating with regulators to avoid situations like this going forward”.

According to the New York Times, the case began with a sealed lawsuit filed with the federal government in 2007. But, after two years of investigation the government decided not to join the lawsuit.

Later in 2011, Vainer and Barbir filed the case again under the false claims Act in civil court.

The lawsuit clearly cited DaVita’s inefficient use and costly waste of the drugs Zemplar, or Vitamin D, and Venofer, an iron supplement.

According to the lawsuit, the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended against allowing multiple uses of the same vial in 2001, based on infection outbreaks caused by the re-entry of another drug, Epogen.