Whistleblowers

The fight against fraud received some significant help last week when Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Wyden introduced legislation geared to strengthen the IRS Whistleblower program.  If passed into law, the IRS Whistleblower Improvements Act of 2017 will provide...

Although a vast majority of states (and the District of Columbia) have False Claims Acts to protect their taxpayer dollars, twenty states still have not enacted effective anti-fraud legislation. Pennsylvania is one of those states lacking a False Claims Act law....

Is a state or state agency a “person” for False Claim Act (FCA) whistleblower purposes?  This question is important because the language attaches liability to “any person who knowingly presents….false or fraudulent claims.” Since its inception in 1863, the FCA has...

The United States filed a complaint on January 23, 2017, officially intervening in an alleged kickback scheme against East Texas Medical Center Regional Healthcare System, Inc., East Texas Medical Center Regional Health Services, Inc. (together “ETMC”), Paramedics...

The United States released data last week showing that the Department of Justice (DOJ) recovered more than $4.7 billion in 2016 from settlements and judgments in whistleblower cases involving fraud or false claims against the government. This is the third largest...

Last week, the Supreme Court issued an 8-0 decision in State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. v. United States ex rel. Rigsby, finding in favor of the whistleblowers a little more than a month after holding oral arguments. As we wrote in November, this decade-old case...

On the eve of Thanksgiving, one thing we can be thankful for is the great year that the SEC Whistleblower Program had protecting the United States markets from fraud. In its annual report to Congress, the SEC detailed several encouraging trends that it experienced in...

Oral arguments were held before the Supreme Court this week in the case of State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. U.S. ex rel. Rigsby.  The decade-old case originates from claims made by Cori and Kerrie Rigsby, sisters from Alabama, who filed a False Claims Act case...

On October 24, 2016, the Department of Justice announced a settlement with Life Care Centers of America Inc. (Life Care) and its owner, Forrest L. Preston. The defendants agreed to pay $145 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging that Life Care violated the False Claims...

Members of government agencies often ask us whether their employment by the government impacts whether they can serve as a whistleblower in a qui tam case under the False Claims Act (“FCA”)? Unfortunately, the short answer is “maybe.” Government employees can...