According to the organization, Taxpayers Against Fraud (“TAF”), the federal government receives over $16 for every $1 it spends investigating and prosecuting civil healthcare fraud. This is even after subtracting the amount paid to whistleblowers.
Under the False Claims Act (“FCA”), healthcare fraud cases have grown significantly. Just 62 healthcare qui tam cases were recorded from 1987 to 1992 but 412 were recorded for last year alone.
The Kmart discount chain, in order to settle False Claims Act complaints, has agreed to pay $2.55 million.
Kmart violated the False Claims Act by billing Medicaid, the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, and other health programs for all drugs included in a prescription in cases when it dispensed only part of the prescribed drugs.
Greg Abbott, Texas Attorney General, announced that Fougera Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a New York-based subsidiary of Sandoz Inc., fraudulently reported inflated drug prices to the Medicaid program and will now have to pay up.
Under the settlement agreement, Fougera will pay the state and the federal government a total of $22.75 million.
Much like the United States, Britain is considering rewarding whistleblowers in order to encourage more to come forward in an effort to uncover fraud and other white-collar crimes.
The U.K. Home Office and other government agencies will examine the qui tam provisions of the U.S.
Michael A. Morse will be presenting at a National Business Institute CLE on November 21, 2013. He will present on “False Claims Act and Qui Tam Litigation.”
For more information and to register for this presentation, please see:
http://www.nbi-sems.com/Details.
In a case that could have enormous implications for the federal government and the pharmaceutical industry, the United States Supreme Court has asked the Solicitor General to provide its position. The issue involves Rule 9(b) of the False Claims Act, which requires a whistleblower to allege claims of fraud with specificity.
Tracking the whistleblower provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, new legislation would establish whistleblower bounties and protections for information given to the New York State Department of Financial Services (“DFS”) – a super agency formed in October 2011 to regulate banks and insurance companies in New York.
OtterBox has been accused in a federal lawsuit in Colorado of failing to pay federal import taxes on its popular China-manufactured cell-phone cases. The case was filed in 2011 but remained under seal until August 19, 2013. According to court filings, OtterBox had previously advised the government that it had broken the law by not paying enough customs duties and has moved to dismiss the whistleblower’s lawsuit on the basis of this “prior disclosure.
Senate Finance Committee Senior Member Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is pushing IRS-Commissioner Nominee John Koskinen to lead the IRS in better processing whistleblower claims. While there have been a number of whistleblowers who provided information on tax scofflaws, the payouts to these whistleblowers have been few and far between.
The SEC has awarded more than $14 million to a whistleblower whose information led to an SEC enforcement action that recovered substantial investor funds. This payment – the largest to date made by the SEC’s whistleblower program – comes from a separate fund previously established by the Dodd-Frank Act and does not reduce the amount paid to harmed investors.
