In a Qui Tam False Claims Act suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, ATK Launch Systems Inc., has agreed to pay the United States $21 million and provide necessary in-kind services worth $15,967,160 in reparation costs for 76,000 malfunctioning para-flares that were sold to the government.
On April 23, 2012, the United States Department of Justice announced that Anthony Allega Cement Contractor, Inc., a Cleveland based construction firm, has agreed to pay $500,000 to the U.S. government to resolve allegations under the False Claims Act.
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.
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.
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.
