Paul Ehlen

The founder of the Minnesota-based medical products company Precision Lens died when a vintage plane crashed shortly after takeoff at an airport in Montana. Paul Ehlen was piloting the plane that went down at 8:07 a.m. Tuesday at the Ravalli County Airport, the company’s chief financial officer, Bill Henneman, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The aircraft was a World War II vintage P-40E registered with the Federal Aviation Administration to one of Ehlen’s LLCs. Precision Lens is based in Bloomington, Minnesota. In February, a federal jury found Ehlen and his Cameron-Ehlen Group Inc., which does business as Precision Lens, violated the federal anti-kickback statute and False Claims Act. A judge ordered damages of $487 million. The company said at the time that it planned to appeal. Prosecutors at the trial said Precision Lens paid eye surgeons through luxury ski vacations and trips to exclusive sporting events to induce them to use their products in cataracts surgeries that were reimbursed by Medicare.