According to a report in the Huffington Post, recent confidential federal audits accuse the nation’s five largest mortgage companies of defrauding taxpayers in their handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans. Five separate investigations conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general examined Bank of America,
In Schindler Elevator v. United States ex rel. Kirk, the United States Supreme Court held that a federal agency’s written response to a FOIA request for records constitutes a “report” within the meaning of the False Claims Act’s public disclosure bar. The Court looked to the dictionary definition for “report”,
Changes to the law in 2006 guaranteed whistleblowers between 15 and 30 percent of any IRS recovery based upon information provided by a whistleblower. More recent changes guarantee that the IRS receives its cut of these whistleblower payouts. The IRS has announced that it intends to withhold taxes from the whistleblower award payments that it makes.
United States Attorney Stephen J. Murphy and the Department of Justice announced that ABN AMRO Mortgage Group, Inc. (ABN) has agreed upon a settlement with the United States government valued at over $41 million evolving from a False Claims Act case in connection with over 28,000 federally insured mortgages. This payment by ABN is one of the largest ever acquired in a civil settlement by the U.S.
Senators Charles Grassey (Republican – Iowa) and Patrick Leahy (Democrat – Vermont) have introduced a bill to fellow members of the Senate Judiciary Committee which, if passed, would redirect a fraction of the money recovered through fraud cases back into the Justice Department to help with their anti-fraud enforcement activities.
The United State Department of Justice has announced that Shell Oil Company, Shell Offshore Inc., Shell Frontier Oil & Gas Inc., and Shell Western Exploration and Production have come to an agreement regarding the False Claims Act charges filed against them. The Shell Defendants will pay the United States $2.2 million plus interest to resolve claims that the Shell companies violated the False Claims Act by deliberately underpaying royalties owed on natural gas produced from Federal leases.
Dyncorp International LLC and its subcontractor, The Sandi Group, were charged with allegations of submitting false claims for payment under Dyncorp’s contract with the Department of State to provide civilian police training in Iraq. The qui tam lawsuit was filed by two former TSG employees, which alleged that Dyncorp was submitting inflated claims for the construction of container camps at various locations in Iraq and that TSG was seeking reimbursement for danger pay that it falsely claimed to have paid its U.S.
Masoncare Health Center, an inpatient and outpatient healthcare facility, was charged with violating the False Claims Act and will pay the government almost $450,000 to resolve the allegations. Masoncare was improperly billing Medicare and Medicaid for injections of leuprolide acetate, or Lupron. The medication is used to treat prostate cancer in men and endometriosis and fibroids in women.
Peter Budetti, director of Program Integrity at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has focused his attention on fraud prevention, detection, and prosecution. On average, between $70 billion and $234 billion is lost annually due to healthcare fraud. Obama’s administration has also committed resources to minimizing fraud.
The number one state for healthcare fraud is Florida,
Sutter Hospital, a large hospital chain in Northern California, has had a qui tam lawsuit filed against them for false billing of anesthesia services. It is believed that the fraudulent amount is in the hundreds of million of dollars. Some of the billing codes for the services or supplies that Sutter Hospitals used were previously paid.
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.