On Thursday, Sprint Nextel Corp., the third largest mobile service provider in the United States, was sued by the state of New York for over $300 million for allegations of tax fraud. The State of New York claimed that Sprint intentionally decided not to collect or pay taxes, worth millions of dollars,
A spokesperson of Merck Sharp & Dohme announced that the company agreed to plead guilty to one count of misbranding Vioxx. The unit of Merck & Co., the second-largest U.S. drug maker, plead guilty to a criminal misdemeanor charge as part of a $950 million settlement of a U.S. government probe of its illegal marketing of the painkiller Vioxx.
After an Arkansas jury found that Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) company officials misled doctors and patients about the risks of one of their drugs, a judge ruled that JNJ must pay more than $1.1 billion in fines. The drug was an antipsychotic medication called Risperdal. The jury had concluded that J&J’s marketing of this particular drug violated both Medicare fraud laws and Arkansas’s deceptive trade practices statutes.
The Justice Department announced on April 3, 2012 that Radiotherapy Clinics of Georgia LLC, a radiation oncology practice, and its affiliates RCOG Cancer Centers LLC, Physician Oncology Services Management Company LLC, Frank A. Critz, M.D. and Physician Oncology Services L.P. (jointly, RCOG) agreed to pay $3.8 million to settle claims that they violated the False Claims Act.
United States came to an agreement of $47 million to settle a case involving a conspiracy to rig the bids on a USAID-funded construction. Harbert Corporation, Harbert International, Inc., Bill Harbert International Constructions Inc., Harbert Construction Services (U.K.) Ltd. and Bilhar International Establishment were accused of causing others to submit false claims,
WellCare Health Plans Inc., based in Tampa, will pay $137.5 million to settle allegations of False Claims Act violations. WellCare provides managed health care services for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries throughout the country. The suit alleged various schemes which included submitting false claims to government health care programs, and included allegations that WellCare wrongly overstated the amount it claimed to be spending on medical care so that they did not have to return money to these government health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
A whistleblower who had previously alleged that BP committed a violation of the False Claims Act in 2002, has now filed a motion for summary judgment against BP in federal court in Houston, TX.
Kenneth Abbott, formerly a BP contractor on the Atlantis oil field, previously made claims that BP did not retain suitable engineering documents on Atlantis.
The SEC’s new whistleblower program which was effective in early August 2011, has improved the quality of tips reported to the SEC and has resulted in numerous large suits. Recently, a tip given to the SEC by an accounting executive of a company on the edge of going public, had information concerning misleading financial statements,
The Financial Times reports that the new SEC and CFTC whistleblower provisions of the Dodd-Frank law of 2010 has caused an increase in reliable tips to federal regulators. Sean McKessy, head of the SEC Whistleblower Office indicated that the SEVC has received a number of tips with signs of reliability either because they are coming from someone working at the company or there is a sufficient amount of specificity.
The IRS has recently published “Rewards and Awards for Information relating to Violations of Internal Revenue Laws; Final Regulations.” The 8-page documents contains final regulations regarding the payment of awards under the Whistleblower program. The new publication clarifies definitions concerning “proceeds of amounts collected” and “collected proceeds” for purposes of determining whether to pay an award to a whistleblower.
If you are aware of any person, corporation or entity that you think may be violating the Federal False Claims Act or a State False Claims Act, contact us today.